Washika (7 page)

It was warm under the grey blankets and his throat was dry. He lay on his side with his head resting on one arm. He could smell the ointment. He closed his eyes and he saw Lise Archambault lying in her bed, with her hair untied and floating across the pillow. Because it was so warm, she had rolled the covers back and unlaced her nightdress. Henri could see one of her breasts pointing upwards from her chest. He ran his hand along his chest. It was greasy, and he could feel the scales, like when he had once ran his hand over the back of a dead fish.

He listened to the quiet. Someone was snoring. There was another sound. At last, he was sure. It was not a dream. He listened to the puffing of the oil stove and remembered P'tit-Gus saying that it was raining. But he also remembered P'tit-Gus saying that it was not raining hard enough. He raised himself on his elbows and listened through the quiet, and the snoring, and the puffing of the oil stove. It was raining. He could hear the soft but steady patter of rain on the tar-papered roof. It was raining! Henri smiled in the darkness. Please God, he prayed, let it keep on. Let it be thunder and lightning if You want, I don't care. But just keep it coming. Harder and harder. Alphonse is a good man. He's a good and kind man but it'll take more than this to convince him. Just a little harder, Lord. Please. And lots of black clouds. If it keeps on like this, he'll want us out there by seven. And besides, dear God, if it doesn't rain, even a little, I won't be able to go out to work. I can't work in the sun, remember. That's what she said.

He rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. He no longer heard the stove, or the snoring, not even the rain. It was soft and warm in his bed and he could see the little green eyes looking into his and smell her good smell and feel the touch of her hair on his arm.

A
t a quarter to six Dumas Hébert stepped out onto the landing of the cookhouse and rang the bell. Almost immediately lights could be seen through the windows of the camp buildings and there were sounds of low murmuring voices, boots shuffling, doors closing and, throughout the camp, the older men could be heard enduring their morning cough. Some of the men were worse than others. Télesphore Aumont was forty-one years old and captain of the tugboat,
Hirondelle
. Every morning, he would walk to the washroom with his back bent. Before he would reach the washroom, his face would be very red from coughing and his eyes so large and wet that the students would watch him attentively to see if this was the day his eyes would come popping out of his head. Télesphore smoked cigars and he had, most certainly, the worse cough of the whole camp.

In the bunkhouse-and-office, the students stumbled around the space heater trying to find their jeans and socks and bumping into one another. They no longer noticed that, from the waist up, their bodies were a light brown while their legs and feet were the colour of white chalk. Henri was a special case. In addition to his light tan, his chest was covered with a thin rust-coloured scab. Lavigne came closer to look at it as Henri buttoned his shirt.

“
Et calis
!” he said.

Henri said nothing. It was bad enough without talking about it. It made him feel sick just looking at it. Maybe he would see Lise about it after breakfast. He could not work with a chest like that. That made him feel better, that, and the rain, and maybe seeing Lise later.

As Henri prepared to leave with the others it struck him suddenly that André Guy was not with them. He had not noticed earlier. Perhaps it was because of the scabs, or the rain, or the excitement of seeing Lise Archambault again.

“Hey, you guys! Look at that,” Henri called to the others.

The guys came over to where Henri was standing. There, on the bed closest to the stove, was a mound beneath the grey wool blankets with several strands of brown hair sticking out at one end.

“I'll get some water,” Lavigne offered.

“No, leave him alone,” Henri said. Already he regretted having spoken about it.

“You've forgotten the French bed, Henri?” one of the guys added.

No, Henri had not forgotten. It was another of André's many pranks. He would simply remove all of the blankets from the bed, take the sheet from the foot of the bed and fold it up to the head. The blankets were then returned to the bed as they had been previously. That night, when Henri drove his feet in under the blankets there was some resistance at first, and then he heard the sound of cotton tearing as his feet went through the sheet. There was another sound in the darkened room, insane laughter, coming from the bed closest to the oil space heater.

“Come on, Henri,” Lavigne pleaded. “Don't miss your chance. I'll do it for you if you want.”

“No,” Henri said flatly.

“Wait! I've got an idea,” said St-Jean.

Maurice St-Jean stood by the door with a towel draped over his shoulder, his sandy brown hair rumpled from sleep, and with that grin that always gave him the appearance of not having any teeth.

“Hurry up, Gaston,” he said, nodding towards the bed. “Grab one end. Henri, you hold the door.”

St-Jean looked around the room. The other two roommates, Pierre Morrow and Gaston Cyr, stood by the oil furnace waiting to see what would happen.

“Go on!” St-Jean turned on them. “Get going before he wakes up.”

Morrow and Cyr left, running across the yard in the rain. Henri tied the inner door open with a length of wire. He held the screen door open with one hand while he remained standing inside.

St-Jean signalled to Lavigne and, together, they lifted the bed off the floor. They walked slowly, shuffling their feet and carrying the bed at arm's length.

As they carried the bed past Henri and out through the doorway, St-Jean stumbled on the square timber landing. He was a strong young man and the muscles stood out on his neck as he squatted on the sand with the foot of the bed against his chest. Stepping backwards on the sand, St-Jean pulled himself upright. He and Lavigne carried the bed out to the centre of the yard and lowered it to the ground. Henri covered André's feet with a section of blanket. The three boys ran then, crossing the yard in the pouring rain.

That morning, the older men were surprised to find the washroom so quiet. They found the students gathered around the windows and looking out through the rain. Some of the men went to the windows and looked over the students' shoulders of. There, in the centre of the yard in the pouring rain, was a bed and a mound of wet, grey blankets.

St-Jean was beginning to have regrets. The joke was not going well. How could anyone go on sleeping in the rain like that? Several of the students began to leave. They didn't want to miss anything but it was late. The bell would ring in a few minutes and they had not even washed yet. St-Jean was about to give up. Then he heard the screen door slam shut and he saw Gauthier walking across the yard. He was headed towards the cookhouse.

As Gauthier walked by the bed, the mound of blankets began to move. He paid no attention to the bed. He continued walking towards the cookhouse and then as the rain started to come down in large, heavy droplets he began to run. Suddenly, a violent scream erupted from behind him. Gauthier glanced over his left shoulder; André was coming after him, running barefoot on the sand and wearing only his white cotton underwear.

In the main sleep camp, laughter filled the washroom as André chased Gauthier around and around the camp yard in the pouring rain.

A
t exactly six o'clock, Dumas Hébert came out of the cookhouse and, without looking at the men gathered before him, took the rod down from its hook and rang the second bell.

André Simard-Comtois, superintendent of the camp, was often late for breakfast. So was P'tit-Gus, but that was not his fault since there were often last minute chores to attend to. Jean-Luc Desrosiers was often late as well but that was also understandable since his position as Inspector of Sweeps kept him on the move most of the time. Often, he would arrive at Washika just in time for the breakfast bell. There were times when he would arrive much later, in which case he would be at the cook's mercy. If Dumas was in a good mood that morning, there would be leftover toast, and tea, and perhaps some buns and warmed-over potatoes and ham. Otherwise, Jean-Luc would have to settle for strong black tea and cakes. Or he might be informed that the cookhouse was not a restaurant and that if he wanted to eat there he should arrive on time like everybody else.

That morning, as Dumas rang the bell, all of the older workers at the camp were present with the exception of P'tit-Gus. Dumas placed the rod on its hook and stood by the open doorway. As each man filed past him, Dumas collected the green meal ticket. He did not smile or speak to the men. He stood straight in his white, short-sleeved shirt and trousers and examined carefully each hand that held out a ticket. He would not tolerate a lack of cleanliness in his cookhouse. Dumas was forty-two years old and he had not been a cook all of his life. He had worn many different hats in his life. Before becoming a cook in the lumber camps, Dumas had tried his hand at several different trades in the cities he lived in. It was said that, although he was not more than five foot eight and weighed scarcely more than one hundred and thirty pounds, whenever he grew tired of the cookhouse he would trade in his white uniform for work boots and wool shirts and there was hardly a lumberjack around that could keep up to him.

Gauthier was at the end of the line. As he handed Dumas the ticket, the cook glanced past him. He could see how Dumas's eyes changed and how his cheeks moved showing the outline of his jaw. The students came, running across the yard. Some came from the main sleep camp while others appeared from around a corner of the bunkhouse-and-office. Dumas counted eighteen of them. The students lined up, single file, and marched past Dumas. Each one of them handed him a ticket and went in to the cookhouse without once looking at him.

When the last student had passed, Dumas put the tickets in his shirt pocket and, as he reached back for the handle of the screen door, he saw P'tit-Gus coming across the yard. He was half-walking, half-running on his short, stocky legs, his heavy work boots slipping in the sand. As he walked, his head moved up and down and just looking at him moving that way, Dumas could tell he was angry. Without stopping, P'tit-Gus pulled out his watch, looked at it, and then returned it to its pocket, muttering something that Dumas could not make out. When P'tit-Gus finally arrived at the landing, Dumas held out his hand for the ticket. P'tit-Gus trembled slightly and his face and neck were covered in sweat.

“
Gang de p'tits chrisses
!” he said.

“
C'est rien, mon Gus
,” Dumas said softly. ”It's nothing.”

There was a faint smile on Dumas's face as he closed the screen door behind them.

I
n the cookhouse the men sat at long wooden tables with plank benches. The twenty students sat facing each other, ten on each side of the table next to the front wall of the cookhouse and nearest the door. The table opposite them was where Simard-Comtois took his meals, along with Jean-Luc Desrosiers and the two scalers. Along the same wall, beyond the kitchen entrance, was where the older men ate. They were only ten at this table, five a side, but they had been in logging camps a long time and they treasured their lifelong habits: they enjoyed eating in silence and resting their elbows on the table as they ate.

The table opposite the older men, along the front wall and just beyond where the students were, was not used for meals. Running down its centre in a straight line were five large metal wash pans: one pan for scrapings from the plates, two for spoons, knives and forks, and two for cups. The scraped plates were piled next to the first pan.

Dumas stood at the centre of the room with his arms locked across his chest. He stood at the centre point of the four tables and his small black eyes scanned the three tables where the men ate. There were pancakes and thick slices of toasted homemade bread piled onto platters. There were greasy, twisted slices of bacon, and beside them, pork-chops, chunks of fried potatoes and large plates of fried eggs laying one on top of another. Running down the centre of the tables were small jars with spoons sticking out of them: bottles of jam, ketchup, molasses, and brown sugar, salt and pepper, margarine, jugs of powdered milk and pots of steaming, hot tea. Dumas kept a close watch on everything. He saw and heard everything, and never did a bowl, or jug, or plate come close to being half full when Dumas would arrive with a fresh supply, leaving just as quickly with his swift way of walking. Never could it be said that there had been some item missing or in short supply in Dumas Hébert's cookhouse.

At a quarter past six the cookhouse door opened and André walked in. His hair was wet and there were several strands standing straight up on his head. André walked between the two long tables. He did not look at the students as he walked past them. He walked softly but quickly, like in Ste-Émilie when he would arrive late for Sunday mass at St. Exupéry's. Dumas held his arms across his chest. André held out a meal ticket but Dumas did not look at him. He scanned each table diligently as he spoke.

“You have been in this camp how long?” he said.

“Thirty-three days today.”

“And, you are enjoying yourself? Everything is to your liking?”

“Yes
monsieur
. Everything is fine,” André replied.

Dumas turned to examine the table behind him, where the older men were seated.

“And you are well?” he continued. “You are not sick or anything?”

“No, no. Everything is fine.”

“Perhaps it is the hours then. It is early, is it not? You could speak to Simard-Comtois about it, you know. He would agree with you, I am sure. After all, breakfast at six o'clock in the morning, that is crazy.”