Chloé hugged me hard from behind while I accelerated up Mill Road. We were heading up to the cabin where we would spend the night.
The sun was setting behind the mountain, but we still had two hours of daylight left. We dropped our packs off on the porch and went down to the water’s edge. I pushed the old canoe into the water and we made for the middle of the lake, Chloé paddling awkwardly in the front, and me steering in the back. A loon cried off in the distance, warbling its long, sad song. The still water of early evening reflected the clouds as they turned blue edged with orange in the fading light.
There we cast our lines, letting them sink down deep to the bottom. I wanted to impress Chloé, and I knew we could find some spectacular trout there. All of a sudden I felt water around my knees. I hadn’t noticed any leaks the last time I’d gone fishing with Tommy. It struck me as curious. After having twisted my ankle and almost ripped out my eye, could he have possibly punched a hole in my canoe to drown me? It didn’t make any sense.
My first thought was to go ashore near the beaver dam, but the water is low at this time of year. Branches you can’t see in the spring, gnawed to a sharp point by the beavers, make an impenetrable barrier to any approach in the shallow water. I could have tried walking on the bottom, but I would have sunk deep into the mud, which didn’t seem like a great idea. So I concluded the best thing would be to turn back, even if I wasn’t sure we’d make it. The canoe was filling up fast.
Chloé, seeing the water rising in the canoe, was getting nervous.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “Everything’s under control. We’ll get back in time.”
Whatever… By the time we found ourselves out in the middle of the lake, I was seriously beginning to wonder if we were going to make it. We might have to swim. We’d be able to do that without any problem. I was pissed at myself, remembering that I’d seen the bailing bucket in the thicket at the edge of the water, and didn’t bother to bring it along. Which might mean that I risked losing all my fishing gear.
I was heavier than Chloé. And the canoe’s stern was sinking deeper and deeper. Every stroke of the paddle was tougher than the one before, and it was getting harder to keep the canoe level. Even though nobody could see us, we pretended that nothing was wrong. We reached the flat rock in front of the cabin just in the nick of time. Water completely covered the stern and was pouring in over both sides.
It was no easy task to turn the canoe over and empty the water. When I finished, and set the canoe on a couple of birch logs, and then I inspected the wicked little hole that must have been punched out by I don’t know what, I turned to find Chloé … half naked. She’d taken off her jeans and t-shirt and stood watching me, wearing only her bra and panties. She was shaking like a leaf.
I froze, dumbfounded, looking her up and down. She was short and plump and her long wet black hair hung down over her shoulders and back. Her belly stuck out a bit, and she had broad hips, and heavy breasts that her bra could barely contain. The girl who was always comfortable anywhere and with anybody, now for the first time seemed bashful and uncertain. Maybe she didn’t like the shape of her body. Me, I thought she was very pretty, but I think it was mostly my inquisitive and clumsy eye that made her feel ill at ease. I didn’t know what to say, but I knew what I should do. I went over to her, hugged her against me, and she stopped shivering. We stayed for a long time in each other’s arms, stretched out on the big rock still warm from the heat of the day. When the last rays of sunlight had disappeared and all you could see were the stars, we walked barefoot to the cabin. Chloé was shivering again. Her lips were blue. I lit a fire in the stove while she began making dinner. Once the fire was crackling, I went outside to get some wood from the woodpile.
It was a clear night with no moon. The stars above my head were dizzying. If you stared at them long enough you felt like you could fall right into the Milky Way. I called out to Chloé.
“Close the door, there’s too much light!” I told her.
When she joined me, I pointed up to the sky. She looked up. After a few seconds of holding her head all the way back, she began to sway. I put my arm around her waist to support her.
“I almost fell!” she exclaimed.
Our eyes were burning for one another. We were about to join in a passionate kiss when from far away, a long howl rang out over the lake and the forest.
“Is this the first time you’ve ever heard one?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “I think so.”
It was a wolf. A moment later, the pack responded in full chorus to the call of what appeared to be a lone animal.
As usual, I hid my emotions, a reassuring smile on my face. But even if it didn’t show, I was feeling uncomfortable. And maybe a bit nervous.
I’d heard wolves howling before, during trips deep into the woods with my father. Louis would tell me about them with a passion. He came alive, as if captivated by magic. With shining eyes, he would try to locate them. According to my father, who felt completely at home in the woods, the little boy who was his son had no reason ever to be afraid. He could have vanquished a black bear in hand-to-hand combat and it wouldn’t have surprised me. Now, it was my turn to provide a measure of comfort and reassurance. I felt unsure of myself. Would I be up to the task? I knew full well that there was absolutely no danger. The wolves would never come close to the cabin, and there was no way they’d ever attack us. Even so, my encounter with the strange creature on the road a few days back had left me feeling less certain. The howling of a wolf pack in the northern forest is always something fascinating and disturbing.
Chloé headed back up to the cabin to finish cooking dinner, while I adjusted my headlamp and headed out behind the cabin where we stacked the firewood. The beam of light swung from side to side, lighting the path in time to my steps. The wood was stored in a little shelter about twenty metres away. My father had spent a lot of time up at the cabin over the summer because of the transplanting project. The stack was getting low and there was hardly any birch, mostly softwood, and pretty green at that. While shining my lamp here and there in hopes of finding another cord that might have been stacked further away, my eye was drawn to the top of a low hill. There was something up there that looked like a pile of rocks. Intrigued by the unfamiliar pile, I climbed up to the crest, using the trunks of the small evergreens that grew on the flanks of the hill as handholds. There I found a pile of rocks in the shape of a person. It was a small inukshuk, a symbol the Inuit use to mark their trails through the huge expanse of semi-desert land in the Far North.
It was hard for me to imagine my father building an inukshuk in the woods just to amuse himself. It wasn’t his style and it didn’t make any sense. When I saw the dug-up earth and the traces of fur and bone, I immediately thought of the grave of Nuliak, Mike’s dog. I remembered when he asked me if he could bury him on our land last winter. I never would have thought he would bury her within fifty feet of the cabin. It had been well into December when he dug up the frozen ground.
Unfortunately the hole wasn’t deep enough, and scavengers had dug up the carcass for food. I could see the bones with darkened flesh still sticking to them scattered around; maggots were crawling over them. It made me sick. I had to step back for a moment and take a few deep breaths. Once my disgust had passed, I gathered everything I could find by the light of my lamp. With the old rusty shovel that I found under the cabin, I began to dig a “real” hole to bury the old husky’s remains.
I hadn’t turned over three shovelfuls of earth when I once again heard the howl of the wolf. I stood completely still and pricked up my ears. My father had taught me that wolves could fool you; that it was hard to tell where their howl was coming from. You think the wolf is in a particular place when it’s actually somewhere else. And with the echoes bouncing off the lake and the mountain, I couldn’t tell where the howl was coming from. But one thing was for sure; it was closer now. And while I was thinking about that, I heard the pack respond far off in the dista
nce.
I started digging again when I heard the cabin door open, with a distinct creak of its hinges. They needed oiling; it was spooky. Down the hill, I could see a beam of light shining from the porch to the lake. I heard Chloé calling me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll just be a minute. Some animals have made a big mess up here.”
She said something I couldn’t hear as I had just struck a rock with my shovel. I yelled for her to repeat what she had said. But this time, she didn’t hear me, since she had closed the cabin door behind her. It was a big rock and even using the shovel as a lever, I couldn’t lift it. I got down on my knees and grabbing it with both hands I managed to turn it over with a great deal of effort.
It was then that I felt a blinding pain in my left knee. I cried out, falling on my side holding my leg with both hands. A sliver of bone had pierced my jeans and lodged in my kneecap. Fortunately, it hadn’t gone in too deep and I was able to pull it out without causing any bleeding.
But when I stood up I could barely put any weight on my leg. By the light of my headlamp, I realized I’d been kneeling right on a pile of bones and decomposing flesh and that I’d rolled right in it when I had fallen. I finished the job, burying the remains. With a sense of satisfaction, I tamped down the soil with the back of my shovel, promising myself that I’d give Mike a piece of my mind first chance I got.
With my shovel on my shoulder, I was just about ready to leave when I suddenly shivered and my blood froze. I was certain there was someone or something behind me, watching me. All my senses were on full alert. I could hear the breeze ruffling the leaves. The rustling of the brook and the lapping of the lake water against the shore. It was too dark to see anything. But there was no mistaking the odour on the air. It was musky and definitely alive. My heart was pounding in my chest and my pulse was racing. I wanted to take off running, but I knew I mustn’t panic. I had to stay cool. A northwest wind was blowing. The smell had to be coming from there. With an impulse that I can’t explain, I turned off my headlamp, as if I had suddenly realized my life was in danger and that it would be a good thing to disappear. As if the darkness would be my friend if I had to flee.
Fear held me in its thrall. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the dark and I turned around. The treetops were outlined against the sky. Before me stretched the spruce forest, black and opaque. I couldn’t make out a thing. Yet I was sure something was watching me. Something was out there, crouching in the dark. I could feel its anxiety, its desire … Its hunger.
As my eyes played over the nocturnal forest, I saw the flicker of two incandescent flames: the eyes of the wolf. I was spellbound. It was as if the entire forest was converging from all directions toward this intense gaze.
I took a long, deep breath, inhaling to fill my lungs with oxygen. My heart was pounding too, pumping blood into my muscles; I could feel them warming. And my senses were on a razor’s edge, alert to the slightest movement or sound, the faintest odour. Then, suddenly, he sprang at me. I bolted, running with all my strength, leaping from the crest of the hill, carried along by my momentum. I spotted the lake and the cabin, then tumbled violently to the ground a few metres along. I sprang back onto my feet and kept going. I took the cabin steps four at a time and burst in with a bang, slamming the door behind me.
Busting in like a fugitive from an insane asylum, I frightened Chloé half to death; she screamed. She was standing there in front of the table, arms crossed, eyes and mouth wide open, wide-eyed. It took her a couple of tries before she could get it out:
“My God, Alex, what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She shook her head from side to side as though she was dealing with the biggest weirdo in the world.
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d seen the wolf. That he was still out there, behind the cabin, that he was definitely watching us. Most of all, I didn’t want to let on that I was scared shitless. So I smiled the dumbest smile I could, my thumbs hooked into my pockets. Seeing her sit down, a puzzled look on her face, I wanted to go over to her, but she raised her hand to stop me. It wasn’t the howling of the pack that frightened her; it was me. I was filthy. When I fell to the ground after hurting my knee, I rolled over Nuliak’s remains, tufts of husky fur clung to my hunting jacket and jeans. With my bewildered and frightened expression, I wasn’t exactly going to be winning any beauty contest.
“Umm,” I said, dusting off the fur stuck to my clothes, “there was a dead animal lying around out back. I had to dig it a proper grave. The scavengers won’t be bothering it anymore. I promise.”
And I laughed out loud, while she kept silent, her face impassive.
We ate our spaghetti without a word. Chloé’s mom’s sauce wasn’t as good as my aunt Sylvie’s. But it seemed better not to mention it.
The rest of the evening we spent in almost total stillness. Every time I tried to get close to her, she moved away. And when I finally took her in my arms, I could feel that she was embarrassed and uncomfortable, trading kisses but not really putting her heart into it.
Odours are important. Even if we don’t always realize it. And me, that night, I stank. I stank of carrion: of dead dog.
So I didn’t say a thing. Or do anything all evening. I wasn’t really there with her. We were a hundred thousand kilometres apart. Each of us alone with our thoughts. My mind and my sharpened senses were concentrated outdoors, listening for the sound of footfalls and trying to catch the animal’s scent. Throughout the night I got up to stoke the stove. She lay wrapped in her sleeping bag, back to me and face to the cabin wall. She wasn’t asleep and I knew it. When daylight came, I was relieved that the night was over. I think I slept for an hour or two, around five or six in the morning. When I got up, Chloé was already dressed and ready to go. She had to get back, no time for breakfast, she had too much to do. That night, as planned, she came over for dinner. My father put on his clown act and Sylvie tried to lighten the atmosphere by being as nice as possible to Chloé, who, in her easygoing way, jumped right into the conversation, showing interest in everything: my aunt’s salty herbs and my father’s stupid jokes. But I could see that she was worn out. Our evening together had taken a lot out of her. After dessert, Louis and Sylvie pretended they were tired and went off to bed, at nine o’clock. They wanted us to have the living room and the sofa to ourselves. No sooner had they disappeared upstairs than Chloé told me she was too tired and asked me to drive her home. Which I did without a peep.
We traded cold and lifeless kisses. She walked hesitantly towards her house, and then turned about and ran up to me. Then told me she loved me. But I didn’t believe it. I just nodded, like a jerk, unable to respond. A confused look glazed her eyes and she vanished behind the front door.
I gunned the quad and popped a wicked wheelie that carried me all the way down the street. I hopped the ditch, and headed full-speed down the trail that leads to the 138. I exited the bush six feet in the air, trailing dead leaves, grass and pine branches behind me and landed in the middle of the highway, in front of a van that had to jam on the brakes, leaving rubber on the road. The driver, infuriated, blasted the horn a couple of times with a sound that echoed off the mountains. But with the throttle cranked to the max, I was already far away, headed straight for the beach.
Fires were twinkling along the shore. There were a lot of people out, partying. I kept on rolling like a demon, hopping dune after dune, as if each time I hoped to rise up flying toward the stars. No such luck. It wasn’t just my heart that was heavy, but the Suzuki too, and we always fell back to earth, landing hard. The shocks hit bottom and the frame rattled with every blow, which I absorbed, swearing. I imagined that the people sitting around the fires were wondering who the idiot was that had just roared by at such an ungodly hour and in such a peaceful place. Well, it was me.
Later on, sitting alone on the sand, I looked out towards the dark sea. The tide was out and the smell of the seaweed and jetsam ting
led my nostrils, and then straight into my heart. From time to time, I spotted a bird picking its way through the tidal pools that seemed like giant mirrors laid out on the ground. It was a shorebird, making the best of low tide to search through the mud for crabs and other tiny shellfish. Suddenly I knew it was time to get out. There was nothing more for me to say, nothing more for me to do. I turned my back to the sea and drove home. The next day my father and I were speeding down the 138, next stop: Quebec City.
Chapter 3
We drove around for a good half-hour before we finally found a parking place. My father was tense; you could see how he hated the city. Nothing could have stopped him from being there for my first day of rookie camp, but it was just as clear he’d be hitting the road as soon as he had fulfilled his fatherly duty, and I wasn’t about to blame him. He gets pretty itchy when he hears the call of the wild. And the call of the backwoods trails of the Côte-Nord would have been getting louder the longer we circled around and around the narrow streets of Quebec City’s Saint-Roch district.
I didn’t have a clue about the place. Never even heard of it before. But I quickly learned it was a strange place to live, in the opinion of people who didn’t live there, of course. Whenever I walked down the street, I felt like I was on another planet. A feeling that grew stronger every time I mentioned where I lived, whether to someone on the staff or to reporters who were interviewing me. They were expecting to hear something like Lac-Beauport, Charlesbourg or Sainte-Foy. I’d stopped counting the raised eyebrows and know-it-all smiles.
“If you’re looking for another place, don’t hesitate to ask me,” said an assistant coach, as if I had just told him that I was going to live in a trash can for the coming year.
Whenever I ran into a negative reaction towards the neighbourhood I lived in, I’d shrug my shoulders and explain that I liked it just fine where I was. Because it didn’t take long before I started to notice the similarities between a typical Côte-Nord town and places like Saint-Roch, Saint-Sauveur and Limoilou, with their down-to-earth residents, so very much more real than what you’d find in the boring and standardized suburban dormitory communities.
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