Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  Sylvain Hotte

  Break Away

  Jessie on my mind

  Translated by Casey Roberts

  Montreal

  Other books by Sylvain Hotte

  The Darhan Series (2006-2008)

  Darhan, La fée du lac Baïkal

  Darhan, Les chemins de la guerre

  Darhan, La jeune fille sans visage

  Darhan, La malédiction

  Darhan, Les métamorphoses

  Darhan, L’esprit de Kökötchü

  Darhan, L’empereur Océan

  Darhan, Le Voyageur

  Miguel Torres (1998)

  Le chagrin des étoiles (2008)

  Les fistons (2008)

  Break Away is the first book by Sylvain Hotte to appear in English.

  Chapter One

  Yesterday at sunset I drove my quad up to the lake. The day’s last light reflected off the water as it rippled under the glacial winds that swept down from the mountain. The fresh air smelled of pine and wet leaves. I stood on the big rock that I use for a summer fishing spot. The fish hadn’t been biting this year. I was too nervous, my father said ; the fish could smell me.

  I held up my two hands to protect my eyes from the sun and confirmed what Tommy had said at practice that morning. We had barely jumped onto the ice when he skated up to me with his stick in one hand, braked to a stop, and lifted his visor. He looked upset, angry even : over the last couple of weeks the Company had gotten right down to the lake, he said.

  Tommy was an easygoing kind of guy but he liked to tell tall tales. To hear him talk, they’d turned the area around Lake Matamek into a kind of no man’s land. Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as I expected, but even then… Tall black spruces once lined the shore to the north ; now they were gone. Suddenly, I felt betrayed.

  A couple of years ago, Tommy, me, and a few of the other guys turned it into a super spot for hockey. Up in the mountains, the lake stretches east to west, parallel to the river. Strong winds usually sweep away the snow, exposing the clear blue ice underneath as far as you can see.

  Except for last year, when we had a bad time with our open-air rink. The first snow in November fell before the lake froze over. Which meant the ice never had time to set and the lake surface was under a couple feet of slush. We shovelled fast and furious, then flooded the surface with snow we had melted up at the cabin and hauled down in metal tubs behind an old skidoo. Hope it freezes up before the first heavy snow this year. If it doesn’t, there’s no way the guys will be coming up here to play… Especially since they’ve just built a new arena in town.

  Next, I checked out the cabin. One of the porch steps was missing and there were only a few pieces of firewood left. I made a mental note to bring some up and ask my father for the stovepipe brush. Burning spruce clogs the chimney with creosote, which is a serious fire hazard. After ticking off what needed to be done before winter, I climbed back on the quad and took a last look at the lake. When I turned the key in the ignition the motor misfired. For a second I was worried. But soon enough it began to hum like normal and I took off at full speed.

  I took the trail up to the Company road. There, I saw just how bad the damage was : they had cut more trees than you could count and hauled them away, leaving debris all over a three hundred metre wide corridor that ran several kilometres up the mountainside and disappeared over the other side. I got off and walked along for awhile ; I could see where the big machines had churned their way through the bush and the mud.

  It was already dark when I headed back to town, weaving my way through the maze of bush trails. No sweat ; I could have found my way even in the worst pea soup fog. Then, to stretch out the ride I turned off on 3rd Side Road. When I reached the pumping station at the end of the road I gunned it, and took off.

  By now the lights of the town began to glimmer against the dark water. One hand on the handlebars, I turned up the collar of my plaid jacket to cut the cold and yanked my hat down low over my forehead.

  Just then the engine began to cough and backfire. Then died. Worried now, I tried to restart it. The starter cranked but the motor wouldn’t catch. I pulled my flashlight out of the luggage compartment and began to check the motor. Needless to say the batteries were shot and the light, which was dim to start with, went out.

  I sat there on my quad like some sort of idiot, wondering if somebody would be coming down the road. Maybe once a day somebody did, but it was already getting kind of late. I knew I was in for a long hike. After rolling the Suzuki to the side of the road, I set off at a steady clip, figuring I’d be late for supper.

  After about a minute I saw the lights of a house.

  The Pinchaults are the kind of poor folk you find in these parts, deep in the backwoods. They live in a rundown old house with a rusty roof, with an old barn leaning off to one side in the back. They’ve got some chickens and two flea-bitten horses that are so old it’s hard to believe they can still walk. There’s stuff all over the place, junk of every description scattered here and there.

  Their kid Stéphane is a guy my own age, tall and thin, with a huge nose jutting out from his acne-covered face. He’s been getting his butt kicked in the schoolyard ever since first grade. But these days, he acts so bizarre that nobody goes near him. The last time somebody got it in mind to mess with him, Stéphane started screaming like he was possessed by demons. He grabbed the guy’s throat with two hands and started choking him. It took two teachers to finally pull him off. You can tell the constant bullying he’s had to put up with over all these years has affected him. But at least nobody bothered him after that. One thing didn’t change. He spends all his time talking to himself and collecting insects and little animals.

  I’m not sure why I didn’t just go straight on home. I guess one reason was I was cold, but I also felt some kind of morbid curiosity that made me want to see for myself, even though I had goose bumps at the mere thought of setting foot in the strange house that people were always talking about down at the garage and the grocery store. I wasn’t afraid of Stéphane. For me, he was nothing more than a weirdo. It was his father, Robert, who scared me, and fascinated me too.

  I had heard nothing but bad about him ever since I was little. He was violent and alcoholic, people said. Recently he’d fallen off his horse and broken his hip, they said. The animal had had enough of his drunken rider and sent him flying. The story went that after he recovered from the accident, he beat the horse to death with a steel shovel in a blind rage. It all sounded so low-down and unreal, I just couldn’t believe it. What kind of person could be that cruel ? But… still… rumours and nasty stories can get to you and there I stood, paralyzed, in the middle of the road, not knowing what to do. Finally, curiosity won out, and I started down the driveway that led to the foreboding Pinchault homestead.

  The only front entrance was at the top of the stairs that led to the first-floor balcony, so I made my way to the door at the side of the house, which was lit by a bare bulb hanging precariously by a couple of wires. I shot a glance at the old barn before I started up the steps to the door. Before I could even ring the doorbell the door swung open with a sudden clack. Startled, I jumped back down the stairs, set to take off, picturing Robert Pinchault about to jump on me like a maniac, a steel shovel brandished over his head, about to chop off mine.

  But instead, the person who appeared in the doorway was a girl. Her looks took my breath away. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Arms folded over her chest, she shivered ; the movement made her long curly hair shimmer ever so slightly. Even though her face was hidden by the shadows, I could see her big eyes looking at me, questioning.

  “Hello,” she said. “Can I help you ?”

  She said it like she was greeting someone selling candy bars or bingo cards door-to-
door. I didn’t answer, lost in the sound of her voice, which could have belonged to an older woman. In fact, she did seem a bit older than me, maybe a year, not more than that. I could tell she was cold and beginning to get impatient. I stood at the bottom of the steps, silent and still.

  “Can I help you ?” she said again.

  “I’ve broken down.”

  She motioned for me to come in, and I did, taking the steps two at a time. Then, she closed the door behind her, lightly brushing up against me as she slipped into the kitchen.

  “Come on in,” she said, standing near a table.

  I stepped into the house that I couldn’t help thinking about every time I took 3rd Side Road up to Lake Matamek. I wasn’t that surprised by what I saw : so this was what it was like when people lived close to the edge. The appliances were old and mismatched. The stove was missing an element ; the kitchen table legs were held together with duct tape ; the floor was missing a number of tiles ; dirty pots and dishes were stacked high on the counter next to the sink.

  It was obvious she could see the effect the place had on me ; her eyes were tinged with disapproval. The way my gaze lingered on every little thing in that room must have seemed either pretty rude or pretty crude.

  “I’d like to use your phone,” I said.

  But a raspy voice shot back, “We don’t have a telephone.”

  In the adjacent living room, a man was standing in front of an old television set. His grey pants were filthy. He was wearing a brown wool overshirt and green and yellow hand-knit slippers. His face was red under a big, bushy cigarette-stained mustache. It was Robert Pinchault, and it was clear he’d been drinking.

  “If it’s not the great McKenzie,” he said provocatively.

  “He’s broken down,” his daughter curtly responded.

  “Your car’s broken down ?” asked Mr. Pinchault.

  “My four-wheeler,” I answered. “The engine’s dead, it won’t start. I’d like to phone my aunt so she can come and get me.”

  “There’s no telephone. I’ll take you home.”

  Pinchault walked with a limp, proof positive that he really had fallen off his horse. He plopped down on a chair and took off his slippers, revealing a pair of old grey socks and toenails sticking through the holes. He laced up his old work boots, which were worn right down to the steel toe, threw on his hunting jacket and tugged a baseball hat down over his bald head. The door slammed behind him as he went out. I didn’t move an inch.

  “You don’t have to go with him if you don’t want to,” his daughter said to me.

  Her skin was pale, with freckles on her nose and cheeks. Her Pinchault nose was large and curved, but where on the men of the family it would be big or even grotesque, on her it was elegant and refined, and gave her beauty a fascinating quality. It was a bold intruder on the face that harboured those pale green eyes.

  “My name’s Alex,” I said, holding out my hand.

  She smiled and slid her small hand into mine, which compared with hers was huge and stained with motor oil and spruce gum.

  “I’m Jessie,” she said.

  At that moment, my attention shifted from her eyes to the top of the steps leading to the second floor. I caught sight of two legs with white socks that reached up to a pair of hairy calves. Someone was there, listening to us. Jessie turned, leaned forward and looked up the stairs.

  “Stéphane ?” she said. “What are you doing up there ?”

  Without an answer, the hairy legs disappeared up the stairs. I heard the car start up and I headed for the door.

  Mr. Pinchault sat waiting for me in his big ’70s vintage American car. Remembering what Jessie had said, I was weighing whether or not to walk home. But then I saw her father, who had gone to the trouble of getting dressed so he could drive me home, waving through the cracked windshield. The door hinges creaked and I sat down beside him on a blanket covering the front seat’s torn vinyl upholstery.

  “It’s a ’78 Chrysler Newport,” he said, lighting up a cigarette, “400 horsepower.”

  The muffler was shot and there was a god-awful roar every time Robert Pinchault gunned the big engine. Exhaust leaked into the car through the floor and we both had to keep our windows open so we could breathe. He twisted around and with one arm on the edge of the seat, backed up to the road at full speed.

  Turning on to the dirt road, he continued rolling in reverse until he pulled up even with the quad. His cigarette dangling from his mouth, he said, “Nice machine… what is it, orange ?”

  “Yep.”

  “What kind is it ?”

  “A Suzuki 250.”

  “4 x 4 ?”

  “Yep. 15 speed, diff lock…”

  “Damn,” he said.

  He threw the car in gear and spun the wheels, kicking up gravel.

  I buckled up and settled into my seat, one hand gripping the door handle. Pinchault’s cigarette smoke was getting in my eyes, so I leaned my head close to the window so I could breathe the maximum fresh air. As the big Chrysler cruised down 3rd Side Road at full speed in the middle of the night, I could hear the rocks rolling away after hurtling into the rusty floor under my feet. Every time we hit a bump the Newport swayed back and forth a couple of times : the suspension was gone.

  A couple of times I turned towards him, but didn’t say anything. I could make out the outline of his body in the darkness, his two hands on the steering wheel. The bright orange glow at the end of his cigarette lit up his big nose ; the smoke curled up under his mustache.

  It must have been about then that I saw the moose on the road. But I can’t say for sure because I don’t really remember a thing.

  I found out about the accident later.

  We went off the road into the ditch just before the railroad tracks. Nothing spectacular or really bad ; just a run-of-the mill, ordinary crack-up. Except that the old Chrysler’s passenger seatbelt was shot and my head smacked into the windshield. And I lost consciousness.

  I had a big old bruise on my face, right above my eye. But that wasn’t all. The car’s underbody, just below my right foot, crunched into a huge rock. My ankle was twisted when the floor gave way. I ended up with a massive sprain.

  I came to in a room next to an old man who was coughing to beat the devil. His raspy deep cough pulled me out of a troubling dream probably brought on by the drugs. Slowly I sank to the bottom of a deep dark sea, into an abyss from which I could hear the sound of whales singing. They called to me and I didn’t know if I should try to get away or swim closer to them. All of a sudden, their cries changed into a racking cough, the old man’s cough. I took a deep breath as if I had just come up from the bottom of the ocean, and with difficulty I opened my swollen eyes.

  My eyelids were glued shut and I had to strain to unstick them. Someone was leaning over me, wiping the tears that were running down my cheeks.

  “Easy now. This won’t take long.”

  I recognized my aunt Sylvie, my father’s sister. Every time she pressed on my eye with a cotton pad to absorb the liquid, the pain was more than I could take. She must have seen me wincing since she kept apologizing.

  She was leaning over me with a smile on her face, wearing the same scarf she always wore on her head. She caressed me softly with one hand on my tummy, making circles like when I was little. Ever since I had lost my mother, she had taken care of me as if I was her own kid.

  “Hey there,” she said. “You know, you’re not looking that great.”

  I guess I must have cracked a bit of a smile. Sylvie asked me how it was going, and I had to clear my throat a few times before I could get out that I was okay. My foot was throbbing like crazy. My first thought was about the hockey season and I asked for my father. She said that Michel had left early that morning to get him at the hunting camp. If the trails weren’t too soft after all the rain we’d had, he’d be back later on in the day.

  “They’re going to keep you under observation until noon,” said Sylvie. “The doctor’s coming by to
look at you. Then, we’ll head home. But before that, the police would like to see you.”

  “How come ?”

  “To ask you some questions about the accident.”

  A worried expression came over her face, and I could tell that she too would like to ask me “some questions.” I closed my eyes ; finally the drugs were starting to take effect. Then I drifted off to sleep, her warm hand still on my stomach.

  A nurse woke me up. My aunt had run out to do some errands and would be back to pick me up around noon, she said. A little later I saw the doctor, who asked me how I was feeling and poked me all over, looked in my eyes and ears and examined my ankle. I felt my throat tighten when I saw my swollen foot, red and blue with some yellow spots. The doctor could see I was troubled. I had been lucky not to tear the ligament, he told me ; I’d be back on my feet in no time.

  When the nurse changed the bandage on my face, I could see the wound above my eye in the mirror. I had really smacked myself. A long cut ran from my hairline to just above my eyebrow. There was definitely going to be a noticeable scar.

  “Does it hurt ?” she asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders, as if to say it was no big deal.

  I was slouched down in the waiting room when I sensed someone close by. Suddenly a feminine silhouette had materialized to my side. I shook myself out of the daze I was in to see Jessie standing shyly in front of me. Quick as I could, I pulled myself together and sat up in my chair.

  She wore a long blue coat hanging down over jeans tucked inside of calf-hugging boots. Her hair was tied back behind her head and her body swung from left to right like a pendulum. She smiled, forlornly.

  I couldn’t avoid noticing her subtle fragrance when she sat down next to me.

  “My father’s having a really hard time,” she said with difficulty.

  “Is he hurt ?”

  “No, he’s okay. It’s just that…”

  She went on, looking at the ground.