Washika (21 page)

“
Merci Madame
,” he said to the woman

“You're welcome. Good day,” she answered without looking up from the typewriter. Henri had often gone to the restaurant attached to the hotel. He knew that she was typing up menus for the Sunday dinners.

Henri walked along the lobby that opened onto a cocktail bar. The customers were mere shadows seated at small tables with their backs to the walls. The girl behind the bar looked at him and the bulky sack on his back. Henri smiled at her but she did not return his smile. He looked back at the girl, at the mirror behind her and at the glass shelves upon which stood tall, slender bottles containing assorted liquors and aperitifs. He could see the back of the girl's head in the mirror and the leather band with its wooden pin that held her long hair tucked up in a bun.

At the opposite end of the bar an archway opened onto the restaurant. Henri had hoped to see some of his friends there, the ones who had found summer jobs in town or those who were just loafing away the summer in Ste-Émilie. Perhaps some of the girls he knew might be there drinking cokes on such a warm afternoon, Sylvie, maybe. The blades of a large fan suspended from the ceiling of the restaurant turned silently and slowly. Beside each booth and tacked onto the wall was a picture of an animal drawn in pen-and-ink by an artist who lived on the reservation just south of Ste-Émilie. Henri walked along the rows of tables with their ashtrays and sugar bowls and salt and pepper shakers. He looked at each of the paintings and how the signature at the bottom of each one was the same. There was no one in the restaurant. He felt disappointed, let down. There could have been at least someone to talk to. He had been away for some time. He had things to say, stories to tell. But no one was around. Going out the restaurant door, he looked back towards the counter. The woman who had cashed his cheque for him was there, still typing up the menus. She had tucked in the loose end of her blouse. She was sitting with her back straight and Henri saw her stop typing just long enough to take a drag on her cigarette.

Henri walked slowly, going along Rue Leblanc, looking at the people rushing by and the traffic moving along impatiently. Everyone was hurrying to prepare for the weekend. He stopped to look at the displays in the shop windows and noticed that, as usual, the price tags were placed in such a way that you had to go inside to inquire. At the intersection of Leblanc and Chemin de Notre-Dame, he turned to the right and descended the long, steep hill, leaning back because of the weight of his packsack. At the bottom of the hill the street followed the curve of the river, La Rivière Gens-de-Terre, the pride and joy of the people who lived in Ste-Émilie. Here, along the curve of the river, a wooden walkway had been built. Along the walkway the grass was kept well trimmed and there were trees, maple, birch, and spruce, all well spaced above the riverbank. At one point along the river, within a deep curve of its bank, the town had set aside a piece of land with picnic tables and garbage tins and a paved parking space. As Henri walked by where the metal barrels were, the sea gulls barked at him and flew out over the water. Henri wondered if any of these birds had ever been to Washika. Had they sat on boom timbers on the Cabonga waiting for the students to toss bread and cheese to them?

Along Chemin de Notre-Dame, Henri walked past the Église de St-Germain, a beautiful stone structure almost a hundred years old, and then stepped off the sidewalk onto the gravel driveway of his parents' house. He was home. Why he felt nervous, he had no idea. But he did anyway. This was his home, after all. He knew that his father was not home. The car was gone. Albert Morin was probably at the tavern. After doing all of the
commissions
madame Morin had listed for him as she did every Saturday, he needed a beer or two. Henri walked around to the rear of the house. He opened the screen door and went inside.

“Henri!” his mother cried. “Henri, I'm so glad! Come Henri, so I can give you a nice big kiss.” She wiped her hands on her apron, held him with both of her hands on his cheeks and kissed him gently on the mouth. “Oh Henri, Henri,” she hugged him and spun him around like a child. Looking over her shoulder, Henri saw his sister, Céline, and his brother, Gilbert, standing in the open doorway.

“Hello Monkey,” he said.

“I'm not a monkey,” the little girl protested.

“Ah, don't start, Henri,” the woman ran her fingers through his hair.

“And you, Gilbert? What's new with you, eh?”

“He's been good lately,” the woman said. “Your father had to speak to him the other day. You know what that means.”

“Aha! What was it this time? Snakes? Bugs? Surely not spiders again.”

Gilbert was small for his eight years. He adjusted the glasses on his nose and kicked at the doorsill.

“Gilbert!” the woman raised her voice. “The flies! Close the door, will you.” The boy stepped across the sill, pushing his sister ahead of him, and closed the screen door.

“No,” the woman continued. “This time papa had reached the end of his patience. Imagine, during the night, we were all in bed and suddenly we hear a great noise and then a lamp falling and then my curtains in the living room, and banging against the window.”

Gilbert lowered his head but, when he saw that Henri was looking at him, he smiled, showing where he had lost a second front tooth.

“Oh, I'm telling you,” his mother continued. “I was terrified. Finally, I wake
papa
. He was not in a good mood, you can imagine.”

“So, what was making all the noise?” Henri laughed.

“You'll never guess. I was so afraid I hid under the blankets and all I could hear was the scratching against the window glass, and your father swearing. Oh, I was so scared.”

“Me too,” Céline added.

“Go on,” Gilbert spoke up suddenly. “You weren't even awake. Monkey.”

“
Maman
!”

“Now Gilbert, don't start!”

“Anyway
maman
,” Henri said. “What was it, finally?

“An owl! Can you believe it? Mother of God, an owl in the house…in the middle of the night!”

“Wonder how it got in here?”

“Don't ask, eh? You know how he is with animals. Anyway,
papa
got the bird out somehow. Oh, he was mad. Lucky for you young man,
papa
waited until later to speak to you. The air in the room was blue. Oh, he was mad.”

Henri laughed. He sat down at the table opposite his mother. He pulled the plastic-tipped cigar out of his shirt pocket.

“Here, Gilbert,” he said. “A cigar.”

“Henri!” the woman's voice rose again.

“A joke,
maman
.”

“Okay, I'll take it. Can I have the cigar, Henri? Please.”

“You're too young, you know. And besides, you're liable to feed it to your fish, or your turtle or whatever else you've got up there in that zoo of yours.”

“Yes, you can well call it a zoo,” his mother laughed. “I'm almost afraid to make the beds in the morning. You never know what will crawl out on you. Oh, it makes me shiver, just thinking about it.”

“Ah,
maman
.” Gilbert looked at Henri and then at his mother. “It's not that bad. And they're all in their little boxes and everything.”

“And the lizard! Eh?”

“Is it my fault? Eh?
Papa
won't buy me a real cage.”

While they spoke, Céline had moved in closer and she pulled at the straps on Henri's packsack.

“What's that, Henri?” she said.

“That's your brother's packsack,” the woman replied. “Now, go and play outside, my sweet. You too, Gilbert.
Papa
should be home soon.”

“There's something in there, Henri?” the little girl tugged at the straps.

“My clothes. And a baby raccoon.”

“Henri!”

“Where? Let me see!” Gilbert begged.

“A joke, Gilbert. There's nothing in there.”

“Aw, how come?” the boy was let down.

“Ah, that stinks!” the girl cried. She had loosened the straps and slid the top cover back.

“You brought your washing, Henri.” Henri recognized, by the tone of her voice, that it was not a question.

“Yes,
maman
. And that reminds me. Some of the clothes I put in a garbage bag. I don't think they can be washed. We were on a forest fire.”

“Yes, I know. So, was it very bad?”

“You knew about the fire? How come?”

“A man from the Company phoned to say that you wouldn't be down. He said that the fire was very bad.”

Henri smiled. He was thinking of Lavigne who had been worried because he had not answered his girlfriend's letter. It was probably she who had worried more about her precious Gaston fighting those “very bad fires.”

“It was not so bad,
maman
. At least not for us.”

His mother passed her hand over the tablecloth, smoothing out the long narrow plaits. For a brief moment, Henri was reminded of some other long, narrow plaits that now seemed so very far away.

“I was worried,” she said. “You never know. It could be dangerous. We hear stories.
Papa
just laughs at me when I worry like that but I can't help it.”

“No, no,
maman
,” Henri laughed. “There's no danger. Come on!”

Henri had planned on telling her all the stories: the hours they worked, CC vomiting into his hard hat, patrolling around the island, the animals that had burned alive and him being left in the bush on that last day.

“
Maman
,” he said. “Got anything to eat?”

“Poor Henri. Don't they feed you up there in the bush?”

“Sure. But, we ate at six this morning.”

“Look in the fridge, there.” she got up from the table and went into the dining room. “Wrapped in foil. There's a ham.”

“Yes, I've found it.”

Henri was hungry. He had not eaten like the others at the Café D'or. Should he call her from the upstairs phone? It was only three thirty. She might not be home. On Saturdays the girls sometimes took a walk downtown. No. Better to call her later, from a pay phone at the hotel. Maybe he would not have to call. Sylvie might be there to hear the new band. They could spend some time together.

“Henri,” his mother called. She came in from the dining room. She was carrying a large brown envelope. “Henri, I've got some news for you.”

Henri looked at her face, at the envelope in her hand and, suddenly, he was not hungry any more. That's it then. I'm paying for it now. It was all wrong with Lise. It was good and wonderful but it was wrong and a sin and now I'm paying. Henri's throat was dry and his stomach felt the way it had early one morning on the bus going out to the fire.

“Yes
maman
?”

“It's from the provincial exams,” she said. His mother was not smiling. She removed the letter and the attached form from the envelope.

“It says here,” she held the letter up to the light. She lowered the letter and looked into Henri's eyes. Henri could not look at her. More than anything at that moment, he wanted to be somewhere else. He looked at the flower patterns on his mother's apron.

“It says here, Henri,” his mother repeated, “that you passed with seventy-nine percent and that you will be accepted into university!”

“
Ah oui
,” Henri said, neither believing nor disbelieving. “Not bad, eh? Seventy-nine, you said?”

“Yes, Henri. Oh, we're so proud of you.
Papa
was mad at first. He said that being so close they could have made it eighty. Eighty percent sounds better than seventy-nine percent. But he's proud too, Henri. You can be sure of it. Naturally, he might not mention it. But he's very proud of you, Henri. I know that for sure. Believe me.”

“Anyway, I'm glad that's over,” Henri said.

There was the sudden sound of tires rolling on the gravel driveway and a car's horn honked twice.

“There's
papa
,” the woman said. “I told him not to toot the horn like that.”

The screen door opened and Albert Morin, father and provider, entered the kitchen carrying two large paper bags, followed by Gilbert and Céline carrying smaller bags.

“Here on the table,” the woman said.

“Well,” the man said, looking at Henri. “Back from the bush, eh. How was it on the fire?” The man put a large hand around Henri's neck and slid it across his shoulders. There was a smell of beer on his breath.

“Pretty good,
papa
,” Henri replied.

“Pretty good? Christ, when I was on the fire…”

“Albert!” the woman looked up from the paper bags she was emptying. “The children!”

The man wiped the perspiration off his upper lip with the palm of his hand. “As I was saying,” he continued. “When I was on the fire it was pretty rough. Molasses and salt pork, and not too often at that. And the flames chasing after us. And I seen men on their knees, praying, and me, I was running like hell. Christ, I was never so scared in all my life.”

“Albert!” the woman stared hard at the man.

“Yes, yes. I forgot.”

The man looked at Henri and brought one of his great big hands down gently on his shoulders. He winked at Henri.

“The bush's been good for you, my boy. I can see that, just looking at you.”

“Yes
papa
,” Henri said. He bent down to the sandwich he had been preparing. He could feel the stinging coming to his eyes and he did not want his father to see that.

Albert Morin burped loudly as he opened the refrigerator door. “Hey
maman
,” he yelled back from the open door. “My beer,
maman
. I knew it. Just leave the house for a couple of hours and all the hens come around to your house and drink your beer.”