Washika (3 page)

Throughout these discussions it soon became apparent that, deep inside this young man, there were ongoing perturbations that needed to be addressed. The discussions became somewhat more personal. Henri disclosed more of his inner self. The good brother offered more opinions. Henri was unable to live the carefree life of the other students, he explained to Brother André. To partake in boisterous behaviour at the games, or at the dances, was something so foreign to his nature that it almost prevented him from attending these events. To be carefree and wild was not something that came naturally to him. He had had a girlfriend, a year earlier, he told Brother André, and he believed that he had loved her very much. He had loved her and she had loved him. He was convinced that he had done everything right. But she had left him for no reason that he understood. He had been respectful and honest, and he had openly expressed his love for her. But, she was gone and Henri had died some with her leaving.

One afternoon, immediately following the algebra class, Brother André sat on top of the desk next to Henri's.

“Henri,” he said, calmly. “I think that we should talk about you today.”

“If you like,” Henri replied. He closed his notebook and the algebra text. “I seem to be catching on to the equations now.”

“Oh yes, I'm not worried about that. You know, Henri, there are things in our lives that we do not always understand. We give them names and sometimes that helps us to deal with them.”

“And that helps?”

“Sometimes, but there are occasions when we give a problem a name that implies permanency, with no hope for solutions. You know how you are, Henri. You're unable to fall into place. Just being with your friends is often difficult. You're a misfit in this universe of ours.”

“But why is it like that?” Henri felt the stinging in his eyes. “I have friends, you know. They seem to like me. I work hard and I've got good grades and everything. My parents seem to be happy with my work.”

“I know all that, Henri. But I also know that there's not much happiness in your life. There must be a change in how you see life.”

“I can do that?”

“Yes, I believe so. But it must be you who sees the possibility of change. Do you understand that, Henri?”

“Not really.”

“Think about what I've just said. Think about those people you know who seem to float through life without a care, how everything just seems to fall naturally into place for them. These are people we might describe as having it all—
ils l'ont l'affaire
. Then there are those, much like you, Henri, who struggle through life—
ils ne l'ont pas l'affaire
—they just haven't got it. Let me show you something.”

Brother André slid off the desk and went up to the chalkboard. He picked up a piece of chalk from the ledge and wrote in large capital letters: HAVES / HAVE-NOTS.

“There you go, Henri,” he said. “Two labels for life. The line I've drawn between them is to denote ‘time and experience.' Together, the words and their dividing line imply that the latter can be transformed into the former, and vice versa, of course. If you believe this, then there can be hope.”

The man stood facing Henri, his hands clasped in front of him. He looked kindly upon his student, this young man who would be leaving high school soon.

“This is all I can offer you, Henri. I know that you'll be leaving soon for the lumber camp and then for the Capital most probably. I want you to think of these two words, every day if you can. At this moment you belong to the ‘have-nots,' you just haven't got it. But that's okay. Let the dividing line between the words remind you that things can change, there's hope that your life can be transformed and then when they speak of you they'll say,
il l'a l'affaire
, now he's got it, now he's a have.”

“You think that can happen?”

“I believe so, Henri. Just think of that dividing line and the strength it carries. And I'll pray for you, that life will allow you the option of change.”

From that day onward, Henri adopted the two words given to him by brother André. He thought of all his classmates, all of his close friends, and he saw only ‘haves.' Not a single one of them resembled him. None seemed to suffer the isolation that he experienced in his life. Brother André had not offered him a solution but he had presented him with the possibility of hope.

M
ore than a month had gone by. After the first three weeks the students were sent down to Ste-Émilie for the weekend. The trip down was almost as eventful as their time at Washika. There was the stop at the Cafe D'Or, a restaurant on the main highway, where they flirted with the American tourists' daughters and caused no small degree of disturbance in the restaurant itself. Later they were introduced to the clerk at the Company's Pay Office where they were treated like men for the first time in their lives. Saturday night in Ste-Émilie was the big night: drinking and storytelling and swinging the girls around the dance floor at La Tanière, seeing the girls shaking their bodies and waving their arms above their heads, the music so loud that you could feel its notes in your beer glass. And now they were back. They had returned to Washika on a Monday, their heads still filled with the pleasures of town life. Two weeks had gone by and their weekend in town was little but a memory as the students were once again absorbed by the Cabonga and the logs on and around its shoreline. This was, in fact, their thirty-second day on the sweep.

That morning no one wanted to work in the water. Everybody was tired of the water and the rotten smell it left on their clothes, and the leeches that swam around them trying to find an opening in their clothes.

So they worked on shore. There, the logs had settled on the sand and some, in the wet places, were half buried in mud. But mostly, the shore was fine beach sand and, just above where they worked, the sand was transformed to a brown humus covered in grasses and other low foliage and short blueberry plants. Above the shrubs tall white birch stretched outwards towards the water.

Twenty young men, armed with steel hooks and peaveys, jabbed at the logs and tossed them into the water. That was the job. During the previous log drives there were logs that had managed to escape the confines of the boom timbers. With the opening and closing of the dam at Cabonga, the water level of the lake had changed leaving these logs stranded on the beaches, or in the mud of the low, swampy shores. Now they, the sweep crew, had arrived to clean the shores of these strays so that they could be once again corralled within boom timbers and towed down the lake to Cabonga where, once the dam was open, they could be sent on their way down the mighty Gens-de-Terre River. All along the bay where they had worked that morning a line of logs hugged the shore, floating to and fro with the waves, and held there by a west wind blowing in towards the shore.

By eleven o'clock sandflies were everywhere. At that time of day they were especially bad on shore. Everyone knew that they were not as bad when you were working in the water but then there were the leeches, those blood-sucking aquatic worms so common to the shallow waters. Ten of the students put on life jackets and boarded the two drive boats snubbed alongside the
Madeleine
. They untied the boats and poled their way in among the floating logs. Standing in the drive boats they were able to spear the logs with their long pike poles and drag them out away from shore into deeper water and, eventually, past the tugboat. There, at least, they managed to avoid the wrath of the
brûlot
attack since these little sandflies were more commonly found close to warm beach sand and rarely over water, especially if there was a breeze.

Alphonse had driven the
Madeleine
's bow up onto shore where the water was deep enough. The old grey tugboat's engine idled softly there, creating a backwater at her stern. The students pushed the logs into the current of the backwater, sending them even further from shore.

He stood on deck at the stern and watched how they walked slowly from one log to the next, picking at a log with their hooks until it caught well and then tossing it out on the water. Those with the peaveys worked the larger logs. At opposite ends and on the same side of a very large log, two fellows would jam in the swivel spear-point of their peaveys and, heaving together, roll the log down towards the water. The boys in the drive boats would take over from there, spearing the log with the point of their pike poles and, flexing their arms, guiding it into the backwater current of the
Madeleine
. Alphonse slid his watch out from the side pocket of his trousers. He looked at it briefly and entered the cabin. Suddenly it was quiet. He had shut down the engine. Sticking his head out through the cabin doorway he hollered, “Lunch!”

There was no longer the chug-chugging of the
Madeleine
's six cylinders, no banging of pike poles on the drive boat gunwales, no logs splashing water. Now there were only the voices of the students, their lunch pails striking the metal of the
Madeleine
's cabin as they climbed aboard and fought for a good place to lie on deck in the sun.

The waves ran softly onto the beach; this was almost the only sound to be heard. But then as the crew settled down in their places with their open lunch pails beside them, the birds appeared, high in the sky and silent. Before the last lunch pail had been opened, the barking of the gulls was upon them like a storm. Some of the birds were content to sit on a boom timber and wait for the bread crust or cheese to hit the water while others attacked the morsels in mid-air.

The students ate their sandwiches, and cheese, and biscuits, and washed all of these down with gulps of hot tea. There was the rolling of cigarettes and a second cup of tea; and then came the real quiet. After they had closed their lunch pails and the last barking gull had left, the boys lay stretched out in the sun, with their heads resting on life jackets or rolled-up wool jackets. Then there was only the rhythm of the waves as they slapped against the hulls of the boats or gently washed up and away from the shore. Sometimes the leaves of the birch trees hissed when a breeze came. The sun was warm on their faces and chests and they could feel it through their thick denim jeans. Even their feet felt the sun's rays through their heavy wool socks.

Alphonse was older. He had spent most of the summers of his life on this very lake, eating his lunch like this and afterwards hearing the quiet. He sat on a high stool in the cabin, out of the sun. He knew how the sun could make him sleepy and how difficult it would be to return to work. He poured a second cup of tea and smoked a cigarette. It was enough just to listen to the quiet. Sleep would come later.

T
he
Madeleine
's engine roared. That was the first sound they heard. Next came the yawning and the stretching and the exchange of curses. Alphonse came out of the cabin. It always amused him to see these poor fellows staggering around on deck, searching for their boots or a last cup of tea.

“Work!” he yelled above the roar of the
Madeleine
. “
Allez mes petits canards!
”

It was difficult not to smile. He could imagine all of those uncomplimentary thoughts going through their young minds at that moment. Still, they were polite, a good bunch of boys. They were young students, from town but not so bad after all.

It had been paradise sleeping on deck in the sun, or sprawled out on the floor of a drive boat where, now and then, a breeze came to cool your face and maybe sway the boat a little. On shore there was only the heat and the sand or mud and, worst of all, the
brûlot
, that horrible little creature no larger than a spec of black dust.

Not one of them wanted to go ashore. No one wanted to work on shore where your very presence was an invitation to every sandfly that lived there to come forward and taste a bit of your blood. But, it was the shore or the water. And the logs, of course, were on shore. Those who had worked from the drive boats earlier that morning had eaten their lunches there to be sure of their places. As they began to pole the boats out among the remaining logs, the rest of the boys sat on deck at the stern. Every one of them knew that it was the water or the shore. It was the deciding that did not come easy.

“Come on,
mes petits canards
,” Alphonse encouraged them. “Let's go now.”

Slowly and without looking back at Alphonse, the ten students slid off of the deck and into the brown water. André Guy was the last to go over the side. For a moment all they could see of him was his hard hat sticking out of the water. Two of the taller fellows reached down and, with their arms beneath his armpits, dragged him to where he could stand with his head above water. André came up coughing, swearing at the two boys who were helping him and yelling at them to leave him alone.

At last everyone had returned to work. They worked with their shirts off in the afternoon. Those who worked in the water remembered to tie their bootlaces around their jeans at the ankles. This was enough to keep the leeches away from their legs at least.

They stood in a straight line in the water, at right angles to the shore. André Guy was at the head of the line, closest to shore. The boys picked at the logs with their hooks and passed them down the line towards open water. The logs that strayed from the line were speared by the boys in the drive boats.

Alphonse stood on deck rolling a cigarette and watched his boys move the logs out. He scanned the shore where they had worked in the morning and the depressions left in the sand where the logs had been. Now the logs were in the water and being moved out. Soon all of the shore of Lost Cabin Bay would be swept clean and that job would be done.

He looked along the row of young, tanned backs and yellow hard hats. At the end of the line André Guy stood hooking the logs and firing them back with one motion of his arm. He never looked behind to see where they went. He didn't care; that was what the others were there for. They were there for that. He stood knee deep in the water with logs floating to his left and in front of him up to the shore. These were the logs they had tossed off the shore that morning. To his right were the brown water and the shoreline with its sand and mud and old, grey driftwood and entangled pulpwood.