Washika (26 page)

He showered, combed his hair and brushed his teeth a second time. He looked in the mirror at the red veins on the whites of his eyes. By the time he had dressed and picked up his clothes from the night before, which he had found in a pile on the floor by his bed, Henri was not feeling too badly. If he did not have to enter the kitchen and face his parents and smell the turkey fat bubbling in the oven, he would not do badly at all.

“Hurry Henri,” his mother called. “We'll be late.
Papa
is waiting in the car.”

“Yes
maman
. Is there any coke left in the fridge?”

“Henri! Your teeth. There's some nice cold orange juice. But Hurry!”

“Yes, Yes. I'm coming.”

Henri opened the refrigerator door and felt its coolness on his face, but seeing a half-eaten dish of rice pudding with raisins made him feel hot all over. He closed his eyes and held his head down as he brought out the pitcher of orange juice. He drank one glass and filled a second. There was an acrid taste in his mouth and, after the second glass, the tangy freshness of the toothpaste vanished. The sour taste of bile seemed to override any efforts he made to mask his early morning vomit.

Outside, they were waiting for him in the car. Céline and Gilbert were in the back and his mother sat close to her husband, leaving a place for Henri. The motor was running and the passenger door had been left open. Henri got in and closed the door. He lowered the window and tried not to breathe, or look at his mother, or the pavement moving past him as his father drove them away from their home.

“You were very late, Henri,” his mother said.

“Yes, I suppose.”

“And what does that mean?” she turned to look at him.

“
Maman
, leave him alone, won't you,” Henri's father interrupted her. “Can't you see he's feeling badly?”

“Yes, well I still think that it wasn't an hour to be coming home. And the noise those boys made. And, Henri, tell me, who is Francine?”

“Oh, just a girl we met.” So, that was it. The fellows had driven him home. And Francine. What happened with her? Had he gone into the room after Lavigne? Or was it before Lavigne? And how did they bring him home? None of them had a car.

“
Maman
!” Céline cried. “Make Henri close the window.”

“What's the matter, my pet? Oh, look at your hair. Henri, close the window.”

“It's warm,
maman
.” Henri spoke without opening his mouth. He looked out at the pavement. He stared at the pavement up ahead but never just below the side of the car.

“Just a little, Henri.” His mother leaned over the seat, combed the little girl's hair back and replaced the pink barrettes.

Henri rolled the glass halfway up and leaned his head against it. The pavement on Chemin de Notre-Dame was old like cobblestone and the vibrating window glass made his head ache even more. He wondered, as they drove on the hot, black pavement, why they bothered to drive to a church at the other end of town when their house was almost directly in front of the Église de St-Germain. But it was his mother's church, where she had attended mass as a young girl and where she was married and where, no doubt, her funeral mass would be said. Henri's father had no special church of his own. He drove them all to St-Exupéry's every Sunday. He led them up towards the front of the church, sat on the outside next to the aisle, furnished all of them with collection money, and hardly ever fell asleep during the service. There had been an understanding between Albert Morin and his wife, a pact made earlier in their married life. He would never complain or comment on his wife's devotion to the church if she would refrain from criticizing his Saturday morning visits to La Cabane where he shared a few quarts with his friends and played shuffleboard and told lies about his fishing trips. It was a wonderful arrangement and meant the end of all family troubles caused by
Monsieur
Morin's love of ale.

When they reached St-Exupéry's Henri saw his friends standing around the parked cars in front of the church. They were leaning against the hood of a grey Chevrolet and smoking. Both Lavigne and David Greer were wearing sunglasses.

“
Maman
,” Henri said. “I'll be there in a minute. I want to talk to the guys. Okay?”

“You won't be sitting with us?”

“
Maman
!”

“Oh, all right. But don't be talking during mass. Remember how Father Landry stopped the mass on account of that young Lavigne boy.”

“Yes
maman
. Don't worry.”

Henri lit a cigarette as he walked over towards his friends. The cigarette tasted different. It smelled like La Tanière, and beer. He could still smell the odour of vomit on his fingers. Perhaps it was just lingering in his nose.

“Hey Morin!” Lavigne smiled. “How you feeling this morning?”

“Not bad. You?”

“Very best. You're looking better. Eh Maurice? What do you think?”

“At least he's walking,” St-Jean grinned.

“Francine's really pissed about you, Henri,” Lavigne said.

“Yeah?”

“You don't remember?”

“A bit vague,” Henri lied.

“After I'd finished,” Lavigne began. “You were sleeping on the floor. I woke you up and you went in with Francine. Not long after, we hear her yelling for you to get off and screaming for David.”

“Ah yeah?” Henri said. It was all he dared to say. Already he had said too much. He knew Lavigne and how well he could handle his beer and still remember all the details the next day. He also knew how he loved to add new ones of his own.

“You remember going into the room, don't you?” Lavigne looked at the others.

“Sure. I remember that.”

“And after?”

“Well, not too much. In fact, nothing at all.”

“Okay Gaston, he's suffered enough,” St-Jean said. He moved in between Henri and Lavigne. He put his hand on Henri's shoulder.

“You're not such a bad guy, Henri,” he said. “So we'll tell you how it all happened.”

“Don't forget about the pants,” Lavigne interrupted.

“It's true,” St-Jean continued. “You went in after Gaston. Not long after, two or three minutes maybe, we hear Francine screaming. David went in first and we could hear him laughing and Francine yelling at him and, finally, we all went in. And there you were, with your pants down to your knees and your shoes still on, and lying across Francine's naked body and snoring like you do at Washika.”

“Did you at least have time to get it in, Henri?” Morrow laughed.

“I wouldn't talk if I was you,” Lavigne said. “Just wait until the doctor gets at you.”

“I'll be all right in a couple of days,” Morrow said. “It's a little better already.”

“What's the matter with him?” Henri asked.

“He got a good one off of Francine,” Lavigne began. “Should see it, Henri. Blood coming off the end and everything.”

The church doors were open and the boys, alone among the parked cars, could hear the organ music.

“We'd better get in,” Gaston Cyr warned. “Come on, Pierre, let's go.”

Gaston Cyr and Pierre Morrow left the group, followed by André Guy who had said nothing all morning.

“It's true then?” Henri said. “About Pierre, I mean.”

“Sure, we all saw it,” Lavigne said. “He showed everybody the bleeding, he was so scared.”

“It was his first,” St-Jean added. “And he was in such a hurry. Poor Francine, must have hurt her too. Probably he ripped something.”

“Needn't worry about Francine,” David Greer spoke up. “She may be a whore but she's clean at least.”

Henri felt sorry for Francine. It made him feel bad to hear David call her a whore. She had shared an evening with them. So what if she was naked, and caressed and made love to them? Was that so wrong? What harm had she done to them?

“She's not a whore,” Henri said.

“She's a hundred and fifty dollars richer this morning, lying in my bed, in my hotel room, eating breakfast on my bill and taking the bus back to the Capital tonight at my expense,” David replied. “That doesn't make her Joan of Arc, does it?”

Henri had forgotten about the money. He had paid his share like the rest of them. He had paid only to drop his trousers and fall asleep across her naked body. He could not even remember seeing her naked. Henri felt cheated somehow. Still, somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt sorry for her. He didn't know why but he knew deep down that he had been raised that way. That there was some good in every person and, if only the bad showed, then there must be a damned good reason for that.

“Come on, let's go,” Henri said. “We don't want Father Landry yelling at us again this morning.”

H
enri lay on his back. He lay collapsed and stretched out on the swinging couch on the verandah. He could almost feel the heat rising from the pavement in front of the house. Two houses down, he could hear
Madame
Laviolette putting the metal cover in place on the garbage can and speaking sharply to Ponpon,
Monsieur
Lévesque's cat from across the street. The garbage was picked up on Monday mornings but
Madame
Laviolette always put her garbage can out right after the Sunday noon meal. Ponpon was orange with one ear tip missing and blind in one eye. He had been raiding
Madame
Laviolette's garbage can since he was a kitten.

Henri felt better. The taste of vomit was gone and his stomach was full: turkey and potatoes and beets with raisin buns, and hot rhubarb pie with ice cream for dessert. And his friends had cleared up things with him after mass. Yes, it was true that he had fallen asleep on top of Francine's naked body but he had not made love to her. She had not charged him and David said that she seemed put out about him not making love to her. She had always had a thing about Henri. And finally, the guys had thrown their change onto the bed and, with Henri's share that Francine had donated, they came up with enough to hire a taxi as far as Henri's house. They had all boarded the taxi, of course, and when they arrived, Lavigne and St-Jean each holding one arm, led him along the driveway to the back door. That was when they had awakened his mother. St-Jean and Lavigne struggled with Henri, trying to hold him up against the door while they searched for the key. Not far off, somewhere between the sidewalk and the back door to the house, David Greer and André Guy and Morrow and Gaston Cyr shouted moral support. During this time it was Morrow that Henri's mother heard yelling something about Francine.

Henri felt better now that it was cleared up. He thought about Lise Archambault and he tried to picture the nurse and Dumas naked together. He could not. Tomorrow, he would have to face Dumas in the cookhouse. How much would Lise have told him? His behaviour at the bar was an embarrassment in any case. If Dumas knew about his affair with the nurse he would simply consider Henri to be a poor loser, a very immature young man at best. If he knew nothing of the affair, he might simply conclude that Henri was lacking in experience when it came to drinking and that he might do some growing up before indulging in public places.

Perhaps the cook would be right about that. Henri thought about the blank spaces, the parts that were completely erased from his memory and, that, even after the boys described every detail. This frightened him as nothing had frightened him before. Was this to happen every time that he put back a few beers? Or was it, in fact more than just a few? Maybe he should quit. Never touch the stuff again. Ever. But then what? And his friends, would they still be there? Lavigne and the others would tap him on the shoulder and some would say, “Yes Morin, you're doing the right thing”. And then they would leave him and head down to La Tanière, to the drinking and dancing and the girls with swirling skirts and heaving breasts. No. It was too much. He was too young, much too young to give up all that. He would learn to control it, maybe. There must be a way to do that. He would talk to his father about it some Saturday morning at the tavern. He was too young. There was too much life to be enjoyed before growing old and wise. He wanted to be wild and crazy while he was still young. Later, much later, he would be wise and think deep thoughts and be good to himself.

Henri soon fell asleep on the couch on the front verandah. A loud honking pestered him and he tried putting the noise out of his mind. The sun was hot on his face and he rolled over, facing the back of the couch. He smelled the warm canvas covering and he listened to the metal springs stretching as he shifted his position on the couch. But the other sound was still there. The honking would not go away.

“Hey Morin, you alive?” someone called from the street. This was followed by the honking sound once again.

The noise was unbearable. Henri sat upright on the couch. He looked out from the verandah, across the lawn and the sidewalk to the other side of the street. Everyone was staring at him. They were all there. Lavigne was at the wheel of his father's car. Beside him were André Guy and St-Jean. Gaston Cyr and Morrow were in the back seat and they all had a beer in their hand.

“Come on, Henri, let's go,” Lavigne shouted.

“Be just a minute,” Henri replied.

Henri rushed up to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face and combed his hair and brushed his teeth. He scraped vigorously across his tongue with the brush.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, his mother swayed in the rocking chair by the window.

“Is that that young Lavigne honking outside, Henri?” his mother looked up from her magazine. “He's going to wake papa.”

“Yes
maman
,” Henri checked his hair a last time in the mirror by the door. “I probably won't be in for supper,
maman
.”