Washika (27 page)

“Henri! You won't be back for another three weeks.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well then, wouldn't you like to spend some time with us before you leave?”

The woman looked out the window at nothing in particular. Henri noticed a sudden moistness in her eyes.

“
Maman
,” he said, “
Papa
is sleeping on the couch, Gilbert and Céline are who knows where and you always read your missionary magazine on Sunday afternoon. I'll be back early enough. I just want to be with the guys a little while.”

“You're with them all the time.”

“Yes
maman
, but we won't be in town for another three weeks. Okay?”

How could he explain it to her? It was like his father trying to explain his reasons for going to La Cabane every Saturday morning. His father did not wish to insult his woman or hurt her feelings by coming right out and saying that her company alone did not meet his needs completely. No, instead he went on about how he must speak to Albert Desforges about a new type of fishing reel he had read about in a magazine, or how he had promised Jean-Marie Lavigne, Gaston's father, that he would show him how to get to Ewen Lake where the trout were as large as walleye and more vicious than northern pike.

Now, it was Henri's turn. Poor
maman
. Both father and son loved the woman very much. They loved her so much that they could not tell her the truth, at least not the full truth.

“
Maman
,” Henri began. “We're just driving over to St-Émillion to see the rides. The circus people arrived there on Friday and they say that there's a whole new bunch of rides. Okay?”

It was a lie. But it was a good one. And she would feel better if she knew where he was and what he was doing.

“Yes, yes. Go ahead,” the woman said. “But watch out for that young Lavigne, if he's anything like his father.”

“
Maman
!”

“All right, but don't be late.”

Henri could hear the music from the car radio as he crossed the street. The rear door was open and there was a case of beer on the floor.

“What took you so long?” Lavigne snapped. He raced the engine as Henri got into the car.

“Take it easy,” Henri said. “My old lady's probably watching at the window.”

“Catch it for last night, Henri?” St-Jean inquired. He opened a bottle using the under part of the dashboard and held it up for Henri.

“No,” Henri said. “Where we headed?” He took the bottle from St-Jean.

“St-Émillion,” Lavigne said. “The circus is in town and they say that there are all new rides.”

“
Ah bien
,
sacrament
!” Henri swore softly.

They stared at him. They had never heard him swear before, not even when he was drunk.

“What's happening to you?” Lavigne turned to look at him.

“It's nothing. Let's drive around town first, eh?”

It wasn't too late. Although the town would be deserted like every other Sunday afternoon, Henri remembered hearing that Sylvie's father had sold their cottage at Lac Sirois and so she might be out walking with some of the girls from her school.

“Oh no,” Lavigne said. He turned north, and away from Ste-Émilie towards St-Émillion. “I told Hélène I wasn't going out today. If she sees me driving around town, I'm dead.”

Henri shrugged. He lifted the bottle and swallowed several times before putting it down. So, this is what it's all about, he thought. There are those who have and those that do not. After his talk with Brother André at the high school, Henri knew that he belonged to the latter group. Perhaps he would spend his whole life that way, watching those who have and seeing them expend enormous amounts of energy avoiding what he, and others like him, strove for each and every day. Henri had better grades than Lavigne, he knew all the species of logs that they tossed into the water, just from the bark, and he could play the harmonica and dance. He was a fairly decent dancer and he even considered himself more intelligent than his friend Lavigne. But, Lavigne was a
‘
have,' just like David Greer was a
‘
have,' and all of those for whom life comes easy, just as naturally as breathing. They were all ‘haves' but Henri knew, deep down inside, that he was not a
‘
have,' that he was a ‘have-not' as Brother André defined it. There was perhaps hope that he might be like David or Lavigne and all of the others, that he might someday escape the confines of the ‘have-nots' but Henri could not foresee that happening soon.

T
he man at the gate was wearing a straw hat, just like the one Emmett Cronier wore at the truck scales at Washika. The fluffy blue feathers waved in the breeze of the passing cars.

“Yes sir! Yes sir!” the man said cheerfully. “And how many are we here, eh?”

Lavigne was wearing dark sunglasses. He looked directly at the man but did not answer him. The boys sat in the car with beers between their legs and stared straight ahead through the windshield.

“Let's see now,” the man bent down to see inside the car. “One, two, three…all right. Six at fifty cents, that'll be three dollars even my young man.”

Lavigne fished the bills out of his shirt pocket and paid the man without speaking to him. Before the man had time to back away from the car, Lavigne tapped the accelerator to the floor and Henri could feel the wheels spinning beneath him. When he looked back he could just make out the man waving his little straw hat in a cloud of dust.

“Hey Gaston,” Henri asked. “You know that guy?”

“Yeah.”

“So, who is he anyway?”

“He's the asshole who raped Francine Villeneuve behind the arena.”

Henri remembered the incident well. They, all six of them, had been with Francine only a few hours earlier. Lavigne had parked by the river, where the town had set up picnic tables and a paved parking space. There were several other cars parked there and the tables were crowded with young students and their girlfriends. Lavigne and the boys sat in the car talking to Francine as she stood by the car window. She was wearing bright red shorts and her hair was let down so that it flowed past the small of her back. Every time she jerked her head to push the hair away from her face, her blouse opened wider, as did the eyes of Lavigne and the other boys in the car, even though they pretended not to notice. But, there was an understanding among them, tonight would not be the night. Tonight they would just talk and have fun. So, after some friendly banter, Francine left them to continue her walk. She wanted to get home before dark. That's when it happened. Instead of going up Rue Gendron and then on to Rue du Gap, Francine cut through the bushes along the east side of the arena. Arthur Lauzon had spotted her earlier as she walked towards the river. He waited for more than an hour. It was almost dark when Francine entered the bushes. With the high walls of the arena and the thick bushes no one could hear her screams, not even the gang at the river. Arthur Lauzon was a big man and the whole affair was over in a matter of minutes. The police were called and Francine was examined at the emergency ward. The last words she remembered hearing the examining physician saying to her parents was, “Well,
Madame
Villeneuve, I'm sorry to say this but there are no signs of sperm and no bruises of any kind on her body.” That was the end of the investigation. But Francine knew, and so did all of her friends at school. Lavigne and the guys felt bad about the whole affair and, afterwards, became overtly protective of her. They were with her constantly and they continued to do so until the day she started dating a young man in town, and then she moved to the Capital with her parents.

Lavigne drove the car behind an enormous canvas tent and cut the engine. Each of the boys opened another beer. They drank the beer quickly and looked out from the car at the long wall of canvas. They tried to stay calm and drink their beer slowly but they were excited. None of them would admit to being excited, but they were. There was so much to do and so little time before they would be in the bus again, headed for Washika. Mingled with the sounds of engines revving and pipe music from the merry-go-round, they could hear the barkers calling and the girls screaming on the rides. There were bells ringing and rifle shots and the sounds of baseballs hitting canvas and the rapid tic-tic-ticking of the wheels of fortune.

“Well, what do you say?” Henri drained the bottle and slid it into the case. “Think we should have a look?”

“I don't know,” Lavigne said. “Probably same old junk as last year.”

“Yeah,” Morrow added. “Remember that guy wrestling the bear. Poor bear must have been at least a hundred years old.”

“Well, we're here anyway,” St-Jean argued. “We might as well look around.”

“Okay, okay!” Lavigne held his hands up. “We'll have a look around. You'd think you guys never seen a circus before.”

The guys downed their beer and left the car. They walked along the canvas wall ducking under each anchor rope as they came to it. They passed through a narrow alleyway between two tents and out onto the main flow of traffic with people walking in both directions. Young men and women walking hand in hand, some with their arms around their woman's shoulders, carrying balloons and bamboo canes with miniature monkeys tied to them; young girls cuddled stuffed teddy bears and tall lanky fellows wore hats like the ticket man who raped Francine when she was barely sixteen years old. Children were everywhere, dodging adults and racing to and from the rides. There were fellows walking unsteadily and hanging onto counters and staring at the girls serving candy floss and popcorn, so beautiful under the lights that showed their breasts through their white cotton T-shirts.

Lavigne and the guys strolled between the rows of kiosks, continuing past the tent where the smell of frying hamburgers and onions made it difficult. They stopped by the booth with enormous orange juice coolers with droplets of sweat forming on the outside. They ordered drinks, served in tall paper cups, and left.

“Try your luck! Always a winner. Step right up. Three shots for a quarter!” The young woman held a dozen of the wooden rings on her arm. She held three separately in one hand and waved them above her head. “Step right up!” she called. “Three for a quarter. Pick your prize!”

Henri watched her walking around inside the booth, accepting bills and handing back change from a carpenter's apron before placing three wooden rings in the prospect's hand. Her legs were chocolate brown and, when she walked, her muscles showed just below the torn edge of her blue-jean cutoffs. Above, she wore a purple blouse with two of the four buttons undone. She wore no shoes and her feet were tanned, like her thighs. After everyone had tossed the rings and failed to place them around a prize on the floor, the girl walked around the blue satin sheet where the prizes lay, picking up the rings. Stepping lightly on the satin sheet, she would bend down over the prizes and retrieve all of the rings, calling loudly, “Step right up folks. Winner every time. Three for a quarter. Step right up!”

They walked along the main thoroughfare, between the rows of kiosks: Lavigne, St-Jean, and Henri, followed by André Guy, Cyr, and Morrow behind them. If Lavigne, St-Jean or Henri stopped to look at something, the other three were quick to mimic the gesture.

“Hey you guys,” Morrow called from behind. “Look at that.”

He pointed to several glass cases on a platform. All of the cases and platforms were covered by a canvas roof with light bulbs dangling from wires stretched above the cases. Inside the glass cases were miniature mechanical shovels. People stood in front of the cases, moving small rods that maneuvered the shovels. They moved the shovels back and forth, and opened and closed the shovels trying to pick up the quarters and silver dollars lining the bottom of each case.

“Morrow,” Lavigne moaned. “That's as old as the earth.”

The three up front continued on ahead, leaving Morrow and Gaston Cyr alone in the centre of the thoroughfare. André Guy stood between the two groups, undecided and looking back.

H
enri knew
Monsieur
Gaetan Lafond. He had spent hours watching
Monsieur
Lafond working a plane against a piece of pine, fitting it in place and returning it to the bench for a few more strokes of the long jack plane. Henri was with the man constantly: in the basement, up a ladder along the water troughs, standing on the scaffold as the man replaced window stops and trims. That was the summer his parents had hired
Monsieur
Lafond to refurbish the house. Henri watched his every move, and he loved how the man handled the wood and his tools and the soft way he spoke when Henri pestered him with questions.

After
Monsieur
Lafond had completed the renovations, Henri played with the short pieces of wood left over and piled neatly by the furnace in the basement. Henri felt the wood edge with his hands, and sighted along it with one eye closed; sliding his father's block plane along the grain and always doing his best to imitate
Monsieur
Lafond in the minutest detail. It was only at mealtime, or when he slept, that Henri could be seen without a wooden toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

Henri and the boys stood in the field, downhill from where the circus was. They stood with their arms folded, leaning back on one leg, and watching the tractors go by. The contestants drove by with raised plows gleaming in the sun, the black earth unfolding as they went forward with the blades lowered and turning furrow onto furrow. At the end of the square allotted each contestant, friends and neighbours stood with arms crossed, beer in their hand, and the visors of their caps low on their faces. And they all had a word to say.

“Atta boy, Gus!”