Washika (36 page)

“Never mind!” Lavigne sat up on his bunk. “If I can get her, I'll keep her for myself. Hey, did you see her, eh?”

Henri looked across to the bunk on his left. Maurice St-Jean was lying flat on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and looking straight upwards to the tiny strips of flypaper hanging from the crossbeams, their stickiness shining in the dim light and dotted with dead, desiccated flies.

“What do you think, Maurice?” Henri said.

“What?” St-Jean stared at the flypaper.

“The cook's daughter.”

“Not bad.”

“Come on, Maurice. You saw her. You can't say she's not beautiful.”

St-Jean rolled over onto his side, facing Henri. He reached back, beside his pillow, and slid a tin ashtray across the blanket. He brought out two cigarettes from his pack of tobacco, the ends twisted to keep the tobacco from running out. He offered one to Henri.

“Sure,” Henri said.

St-Jean lit up. “Yes, she's beautiful,” he said. “Everybody knows that. Her too. Just look at her. You can tell.”

“But it's not her fault she's good-looking. Come on.”

“That's true. You know Auguste St-Jacques in town. It's not his fault he's so strong. Just like it's not his fault Gauthier's such a brain. Just like it's not his fault your friend Greer looks good and picks up girls like it was nothing. It all depends how you wear it.”

Henri nodded. He had never heard St-Jean string so many sentences together. “What you say is true, Maurice. And so?”

“So,” St-Jean continued, “just take Auguste, he wouldn't hurt a fly, strong as he is. And Gauthier, have you ever heard him try to make fun of someone with big words or fancy talk from his books? Never.”

St-Jean stopped there. Henri wondered if he had purposely refrained from commenting on how his friend David Greer handled his attractiveness to the girls. David was Henri's best friend, that was true, but he could not deny being jealous of him at times and even, on occasion, disapproving of his behaviour. David was a
‘
have,' like Lavigne. Did all ‘haves' abuse their good fortune at the expense of the ‘have-nots'? Did just being good exclude one from the world of the ‘haves,' doomed to remain, forever, a ‘have-not'? Were all good people ‘have-nots'? Were his parents ‘have-nots'? No, he didn't think so.

“Are you saying, Maurice, that Nicole is not a good person?”

“She's good-looking.”

“But bad.”

“It's like I said before. It depends on how you wear it.”

“I think you're being hard on her. You don't even know her.” Henri paused for a time. “Do you?”

St-Jean did not answer.

“Anyway,” Henri continued,” she must have a boyfriend.”

“That's for sure, and more than one waiting his turn.”

“Come on, Maurice. You sound almost jealous.”

“You don't understand, Henri. You can't know what it's like. I know,
sacrament
, let me tell you.”

St-Jean returned to his original position on the bed. The conversation had ended. Once again, he stared at the flypaper and the dead and not so dead flies.

“Maybe you're right,” Henri said. He thought about Sylvie, at the Café D'or, and how beautiful she was. And Shannon, how beautiful she had seemed to him. But the two girls were not the same. Perhaps St-Jean was right. Perhaps they did not wear their beauty in the same way. And this was surely something, St-Jean speaking out like that. A bad experience? With a girl like Nicole perhaps. What was it? Bitterness or fear? Anger and bitterness and the feeling of loneliness at being let down? Henri remembered the taste of it. He felt sorry for Maurice.

“Hey! Here's Gauthier,” André Guy said loudly, turning from the window.

Henri raised himself on his elbows. Looking out through the screen door he could see the flat light on the sand outside and he suddenly realized how dark it had become inside the bunkhouse.

“André,” he called down from his bunk. “Get the lamp going.”

“It's no use,” a voice said from below. It was Bernatchez.

Henri leaned over his bunk to speak to the man. “How come?” he said “There's fuel. I checked it earlier.”

“Yes,” the man replied. “But it's broken. The O-ring and valve stem have to be replaced.”

“Isn't there another lamp?”

“No.”

“So what do we do in the dark?”

“Sleep,” Bernatchez answered. The man sat up then and began undoing the buttons of his shirt.

Henri looked around the bunkhouse. In the dim light he could see that several of the boys had fallen asleep already, fully dressed and lying on top of their blankets.

Suddenly, the room grew darker. François Gauthier was standing in the doorway.

“Aha, Gauthier!” André began. “And where have you been off to, eh?”

François Gauthier walked slowly as he entered the bunkhouse, looking at no one as was his custom but, as he went by André's bunk, he turned his head sharply and screamed, “None of your goddamned business! Okay?”

The students who were still awake could not believe their ears. Those who had been sleeping stirred on their bunks and looked about them in a sleepy, half-interested manner. No one could see the scarlet tinge on François' cheeks and forehead nor, in the semi-darkness, could they see André sitting on his bunk, his own vision blurred by the tears in his eyes. He had always believed that, deep down, Gauthier was really his friend.

T
he students were handed pike poles and stationed ten on each side of the gap. The job was easy enough: just keep the logs moving and watch out for the jams. Henri was second in line from the gap. He leaned into his pole and straightened out the logs as they came rushing by sideways, or leaning on others, and he twisted the point of his pike pole out of the bark as the log swept past Armand and out through the gap in the dam.

“That's it, Henri,” the old man said. “Keep 'em coming.”

Henri listened to the water and imagined melodies, rhythms, and he smelled the good smell of spruce gum and he was happy standing in the warmth of the sun. He looked across the bay, to the other boardwalk where he could see Lavigne nearest the dam, and St-Jean, and André Guy up to his old tricks, smashing his nearest neighbour a crack of his hard hat. Things were almost normal. Henri found it strange not seeing Alphonse around. He had left after supper without stopping in to see them at the bunkhouse. Télesphore Aumont had left as well.

Henri was tired. Not from the work, for he always felt good and alive and happy working like this in the sun, with the water and the pulp smells and the gulls barking overhead. But, he had not slept well. It was always like that the first night. He could not remember having slept.
Monsieur
Bernatchez, on the bunk below his, had snored most of the night and Henri had smiled in the darkness when the farts came, evenly spaced between snores.

Henri watched the wood floating by and measured its speed as the logs passed beneath the rope stretched across the bay. The rope ran parallel to the dam, only several yards from it, and about four feet above the water. All along the thick rope and at intervals of four feet or so, short lengths of rope tied to the main rope dropped down into the water. Henri had looked at the rope for a long time and how the current made the shorter ropes stand out at an angle. It reminded him of a hay rake he had seen once being pulled by a team of horses with the driver swaying on the tiny metal seat above the curved tines. “Safety,” was what
Monsieur
Lafond said the rope was for. If someone fell into the water, he could grab onto one of the dangling, short lengths of rope to avoid being swept through the gap and over the side of the dam, and into the Gens-de-Terre.

Armand Lafond drove the point of his pike pole into the floor of the boardwalk and leaned the handle against the railing.

“Take a break, Henri,” he said.

“They're moving pretty good now, eh?” Henri said.

“Yes, they're moving all right.”

The old man began to roll a cigarette. “You have your tobacco?” he said.

Henri nodded, yes, and leaned his pole against the railing. Henri and Armand Lafond stood together with their shoulders almost touching, their backs bent and their elbows resting on the railing, smoking and looking at the logs floating by. Henri stared at the thick yellow rope stretched tightly between the two boardwalks, and the shorter lengths seeming to dance upon the surface as the current held them pointed at a steady angle to the dam.

“
Monsieur
Lafond,” he said. “I've been thinking.”

“Careful,
mon vieux
,” the old man smiled. “You know what that can do. Especially out here in the sun.”

Armand held his cigarette cupped inside his hand to protect it from the spray of the gap. Henri watched him taking long drags on the cigarette, and the smoke coming out of his mouth and his nostrils at the same time. The hair below the rim of his hard hat was a yellow-white and his face was tanned. The lines were thin near his ears and growing deeper as they descended below the collar of his shirt. Armand held the cigarette between thumb and index finger. With a flick of his finger, he sent the stub of a cigarette flying. Henri watched it spinning and heaving on the water and, finally, disappearing over the edge of the gap.

“I was thinking about the rope.”

“Yes?”

“Well, if I was to fall in, which would be worse, do you think, to go through the gap, or hang onto those ropes and be crushed by a log?”

“Better not to fall in.”

“Yes, but what if I did?”

“If you're dead, you're dead. Either way, you don't have a chance?”

“And the ropes?” Henri looked at the man.

“You're young, Henri” Armand replied. “Someday, you'll know about these things. Imagine how it would look in
The Gazette
if you were to fall in. What do you think they would say about you? Not much, I can tell you. But the rope, Henri, they would not forget to mention about the rope, and this railing, even your hard hat. And what if you were not wearing your life jacket? They would say that poor Henri Morin had drowned because he was not wearing his life jacket. But the rope, they would certainly mention about that, and how it would have saved your life if only you had been wearing your life jacket. There would be no talk of the saw logs, twelve and sixteen feet long and weighing who knows how much, and how they come rushing towards the gap.”

Armand leaned over the railing and spat into the water. He was a kind old man whose face broke into a smile whenever he spoke. He was not smiling now, leaning against the railing and staring across the length of yellow rope.

“Well,” he said, straightening up and slapping the railing with his hand. “I think I'll go and have a tea.”

“Yes sir.”

It was only nine o'clock. Although the sun was high and much wood had gone through the gap since seven that morning, it was still a half hour before the break.

“A man my age,” Armand said, “he deserves more than two breaks a day. What do you think, eh?”

“Ah yes, three or four at least.”

“Here, Henri. Stand here near the gap. You want to use my pole? I put a file to it just this morning.”

“Sure.”

Henri held the smooth handle. It was much lighter and shorter than the one he had been using.

“Six years,” the old man said. “Six years I've been using this one. Plenty of logs have been pushed over the gap with this one, I'll tell you.”

“Hey, six years,” Henri repeated.

“Yes sir. Well, now I'm going.”

The old man moved carefully. He walked slowly, moving from one boulder to the next along the shore. He stopped once, at the high-water line, and then began the uphill climb to the cookhouse. Henri watched the yellow hard hat disappear from view as Armand stepped over the crest of the hill.

Standing by the gap and leaning on
Monsieur
Lafond's short pike pole, Henri gazed to the north, trying to see open water. He could not. He could see the small tugboat working in among the logs, Bernatchez's tugboat. And he could see the deckhand, astern, working the boom chain with a pike pole. On the opposite boardwalk, the guys waved to Henri. They were laughing and some were shouting to him but he could not make out the words over the roar of the water. André Guy lifted his hat and made a mock bow. François Gauthier was there too, next to André. Henri wondered how he was feeling. Had they changed at all since coming to Washika? Outwardly, it would seem they had not. They had arrived at Washika as students from the Collège de Ste-Émilie and, as such, would return to Ste-Émilie. Their bodies would be brown from the sun and their bellies flat, perhaps, from working the logs, but they would still be the same
instruits,
those well educated boys as the older men at Washika referred to them. They knew nothing at all when they first set foot upon the shores of the Cabonga and they would leave exactly the same. Or were they? How many fathers would be proud and say, “Three months on the drive, it has been good for my son. He left us only months ago, a mere boy, a pale face and a head full of words. Now look at him. Now, he's a man. Look at how tall he has grown. He knows what it is to live. Now he knows what it is to earn a dollar.” Some of the fathers and mothers would be proud and say such things of their sons. Others, perhaps, would say nothing at all.

It was easy to dream. The roar of the water going through the gap had a rhythm, like the old washing machine his mother insisted on using had a rhythm, chug-chug, chug-chug the paddle turned, sloshing the clothes around inside. Henri leaned against the railing, warm in the sun and listening to the song of the water, the melody repeated over, and over, and over again. He thought of returning to Cabonga someday, further down the Gens-de-Terre maybe, within sound of the cascading water. He would set up a camp and fish in the morning. In the afternoons, he would read in the sun and, when he was stiff from sitting on the rocks, he would go for a swim, perhaps, or a stroll in the bush. Someday he would return or perhaps not. He could only hope that time and the acquiring of years would not dull his memory of Washika and the Cabonga; that he would always remember the sound of a breeze whispering through the needles of a pine, and gulls barking, and waves slapping upon a sandy shoreline; that he would always know the smell of sweet fern and spruce gum and balsam; and that he would never tire of seeing the sun sliding downward and making the
chicots
stick up like silver slivers through the flat, shallow water of the bays.