Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  I skated in the afternoon, but not for long, since a wicked wind was blowing and my feet quickly froze up. I only got off a few shots at the old net, held up by an ABS drain pipe. Louis had made it when I was eight. It was all crooked, and there were big globs of yellow glue hanging all over it. It wasn’t regulation size, but I always thought it was pretty cool to shoot pucks at something more or less put together out of plumbing pipe.

  That night, while I was warming my feet on the stove, I heard the sound of a motor. I went out, and standing on the little porch, I saw the light of a snowmobile moving along the middle of the big bay, near the dam, disappearing behind it. My fisherman was headed back to town on 3rd Side Road.

  He came back the next day and the day after that. Then, he disappeared for a couple of days only to show up again the next week. When I realized that he hadn’t moved the shack from where it was in the middle of the bay, I decided to find out once and for all who was fishing there.

  I ’d gone to the butcher’s to buy some chunks of heart and liver. Then I walked out to the middle of the lake, a spot I knew real well, about two hundred metres from the mysterious fishing shack. There I bored a hole through the ice, made a snow bank in the shape of a half-circle to protect me from the wind and made myself at home. It only took a couple of minutes before a magnificent grey trout appeared, hooked to my line.

  I stood up, fists high in the air, proudly watching it wriggling. As I had expected, the shack’s door slammed open and shut. Some guy wearing a pale blue warm-up suit came up to me with a firm step. It was Larry.

  By the time he reached my spot, I’d hooked another one, not quite so big this time.

  “Hey, McKenzie !” he said.

  “What’s up, Larry ?”

  “What’s the trick ? I’ve been fishing two weeks up here and haven’t caught a damn thing.”

  “That’s because you’re just too nervous, Larry.”

  He glared at me. He was freezing in his light-weight jogging togs and he shifted from one foot to the other. I certainly wasn’t about to mention that down at the bottom of the bay, you couldn’t catch a thing in winter. Except for right where I was, there was a depression where the current flowed, where the lake followed the curve of the mountain. The large trout hung out there grabbing food as it passed by. Not to mention there was more oxygen in that part of the lake and the fish could breathe better.

  “Too nervous, eh ?” he said.

  “That’s it, Larry. There’s no doubt about it, the fish can sense you at the other end of the line. I’m not tweaking you. If you don’t stay cool, they don’t bite.”

  “Mmm, if you say so. Hey, McKenzie, you know what ? I’ve been watching you working out up here for a while… Not too shabby, your skating.”

  And later that night, in a scene that could only be called surrealistic, I found myself running stop-and-goes under the stars with Larry yelling out encouragement each time I changed direction. His whistle echoed up and down Lake Matamek.

  Next day, my mind was made up. I was going to take the Skiroule up the Company road as far as you could go. I put together a survival kit with food, blankets, matches, my axe and a jerry can of gas. At six in the morning, just as the sun was rising, I began the journey that was due to take me until after nightfall.

  It was a beautiful day. There were a few fleecy clouds scattered over a dark blue sky. Black spruce lined both sides of the road while I put away the miles, one after the other. I crossed the Manicouagan trail and its snowmobile tracks, well-groomed by the hordes of snowmobilers who had passed by. Then, I continued travelling north, heading deeper and deeper into the dense forest.

  I went through several clearcuts before stopping in front of a road that cut off to my right. Right at the cut off I could see a vehicle buried under the snow. I went to check it out. Noticing that a piece of red metal was sticking out, I started digging frantically thinking it was my father’s pick-up. I tumbled forward trying to clear the snow off the driver’s side door. When I saw that there was nobody inside, I relaxed. After a little more effort, I succeeded in opening it.

  On the seat there was a pair of sunglasses, a couple of country music cassettes, a can of Pepsi on the floor and the wrapper from a garage sandwich. I looked for tracks, but there weren’t any. No one had been here since the last snowfall, that was clear.

  I saw a cutting zone down at the end of the side road. I put on my snowshoes and started out through the ravaged terrain, pushing on with difficulty through the stumps and debris : branches, brush and all the rest. Far in the distance, I could see the column of smoke I had already seen several times before from the lake. Carrying my survival kit and my axe, I used the smoke, which climbed straight up to the sky, as a guide. It could only be seen under these exact conditions—with no trace of a breeze.

  I lost sight of it as I came down into the hollow of a valley. But I’d noted carefully its location in relation to the countryside ; I could tell I was getting closer. It took me nearly half an hour to reach it. I was once again in a cutting zone. I realized I was actually behind the mountain that overlooked Lake Matamek from the north. The cut came down the west flank right to where I stood. I was in my father’s natau-assi, his ancestral hunting lands.

  And, at the far end of this giant cemetery at the edge of the forest, where the Company had spared a stand of tall spruce, I saw a prospector’s tent with a stove-pipe that gave off a thin stream of black smoke. I ran to the tent, driven by an exhilarating energy. Inside, I found a small four-legged camp bed, a table with some books whose pages were stained by soot and sap, and a stove made out of an old metal barrel. Behind the tent, there was a hut, crudely constructed out of branches and bark. As I opened the little door, held in place by a post wedged in at a forty-five degree angle, what I saw took my breath away.

  On branches strung together with twine hung a string of hares. They’d been butchered ; there was nothing left but the skins, with their beautiful winter coats. The meat was stored in a big metal box below the skins, carefully arranged in pieces of cotton cloth.

  As I stepped out of the cabin I saw Louis McKenzie coming out of the woods carrying a huge beaver on his shoulder. He was wearing his high moccasins and his old sinew snowshoes. He had always teased me about my high-tech aluminum snowshoes. For him, there was nothing like moccasins for feeling the earth under the snow… and the silence most of all. When he saw me, a great big smile spread across his face. He showed me his catch with an indescribable sense of pride.

  His long greasy hair hung heavily over his shoulders. The skin on his face, lashed by the wind and the cold, was red and looked thick as an animal’s hide. Visibly fatigued by his load, but happy beyond measure, he tossed the beaver at my feet.

  “Get a load of this ! I’ve got another one in one of my traps. You have to come and get it with me. I’ve got some things to show you.”

  “Your camp is cool, Papa.”

  “Not bad, eh ?”

  We began walking towards a lake I had never seen before. That afternoon, I learned how to make an under-ice beaver snare. His father had taught him, and now I was hanging on my own dad’s every word. Methodically he explained how you bait the trap with aspen branches and how you make the snare with brass wire. You slide it through a hole you make in the ice and secure it with a big branch that you put perpendicular to the opening. We scattered them all along the underwater path the beaver follows from his lodge to his food cache. The animal drowns under the ice, trapped by the loop that tightens around his foot or body. All you have to do is break the ice to gather your catch.

  That night, we skinned the animals and cleaned the pelts, hanging them next to the rabbits. We ate the meat for dinner and we talked far into the night.

  “After it storms, the trails became impassable by truck. I didn’t want to be too far away if I was going to be checking my traps every day. I didn’t catch a thing and I had to eat my bait. But then today, two in one day !”

  “We were worried about y
ou.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you for a while, son.”

  My smile grew wider and wider as I listened to him telling stories, by the light of his makeshift stove that had turned all red, fed by the burning embers. And honestly, I had to laugh when I found out that he’d been the one who had hung the rabbits up at my cabin, in December, hoping I would follow his tracks in the snow.

  His cousin in Montreal promised he would pay a good price for the hides. He figured that would let him make it through the winter, and then he could enrol in a reforesting program and spend the summer replanting the natau-assi. He said he planned to get serious about working with Sylvie ; he thought the gathering business could go pretty smoothly.

  The next day, we tied the skins and the metal box to a sled that we made out of birch bark and lashing twine. We made our way back to town, driving slowly, my dad with his back to mine, keeping an eye on our treasure to make sure it stayed put. We stopped for a moment to climb up on top of the beaver dam and look at Lake Matamek.

  There was smoke curling up from the chimney of the fishing shack and a skidoo parked to the side.

  “Who’s that ?” asked my father.

  “It’s Larry, my coach.”

  “What’s he doing fishing out on the bay ? Did you tell him where the good spot is ?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I don’t get it. He’s got his own idea where to fish.”

  We turned down 3rd Side Road. Robert Pinchault’s barn looked all straightened out. They’d removed the debris from the collapsed roof and piled them out of the way. The facing on each of the sides had been removed and scaffolding had been set up. Some brand new beams had been erected in a courageous attempt to rebuild the roof of that antique structure.

  After telling Louis to turn around and hold on tight, I put the gas to the max and we took off at full speed.

  The Skiroule’s engine seemed about to blow out. It turned at breakneck speed, the packed pistons detonating and screaming furiously at the forest and the mountain. My father suggested I cut the speed, but the sled with its load of furs held together. And, as we gathered speed towards the railroad tracks, I could feel him tight against me wrapping me up with his great big arms. He began to howl at the top of his voice like a madman :

  “Ya ya ya ! ! !”

  We hit the bump at the tracks at more than a hundred kilometres an hour. We immediately shot into the air like a helium balloon. We flew high, real high, the town below us lit by the streetlights that had come on in the early evening. We could see the river clearly — its massive blocks of ice sailing by — and the far-off mountains. We flew and flew, as though on a flying crazy carpet, over the 138 and a huge truck filled with logs, heading west. The fog light at the end of the dock noted our passing with its red and unruffled signal, reflected on the ice as far as we could see, every five seconds. We climbed even higher, as if we were clouds. We crossed the St. Lawrence and flew beyond the giant Chic-Chocs of the Gaspé.

  Larry paced up and down the locker-room, beside himself with excitement. He had come up with a system guaranteed to deliver a victory that night. The game had to be ours. This eternal optimist was never going to admit defeat as long as he still had one foot out of the grave. He waved his arms and rolled his shoulders, a marker between his teeth ; a production that by the end reminded you more of a clown than a dictator. And from out of nowhere, he stopped talking about his perfect game theory and began to tell everyone about the incredible trout he’d caught the day before up at Lake Matamek.

  There wasn’t a soul in the room that wasn’t skeptical. They turned towards me… and I nodded in agreement. I had definitely seen Larry pull up that trout after having suggested that he move his shack.

  Nobody seemed especially surprised to see me, suited up, sitting in front of locker number eight. I’d been put on the disabled list, and now I was back. You could cut the tension with a knife : our last-place team sensed it had a chance to win. That night, under the orders of sergeant-coach Larry, who threw out some mind-boggling shift changes to counter our opponent’s lines, we won convincingly, 5-2.

  The wins kept piling up and we clawed our way up the standings to steal a spot in the playoffs. Playing one of the most boring styles of hockey ever invented, we worked our asses off, all five falling back into the neutral zone and setting up the tightest trap you ever saw. We set about it with courage and determination, totally buying into the system. That forced the offence to pass the puck around until they made a mistake and then, ever on the lookout, I had a chance to intercept and take off on a breakaway.

  The opposing teams’ fans were furious. They howled at the moon like poor wounded puppies and hollered that we couldn’t play the game and didn’t even know how it was supposed to be played. But the only thing that mattered to us was to win. And we marked each and every victory with a big six-inch nail that we stuck into a fetish stick we had put right in the middle of the locker-room. We made it to the finals against Sept-Îles and swept the series in four games.

  That year, in the playoffs, I collected nineteen goals and fifteen assists, finishing as top scorer.

  In June, we all worked on Robert Pinchault’s barn. There was myself, Samuel, Gagnon and Vigneault, Louis my father and Larry. We had just nailed the last shingle on the roof when everyone looked up to see Sylvie’s Toyota screeching into the driveway. She got out, running over to us, both arms in the air.

  “Alex ! They called. They called !”

  I’d been invited to the training camp of Quebec City’s major junior team.

  I’d just turned sixteen.

  Originally published as Aréna 1. Panache

  © 2009 by Les Éditions des Intouchables

  Publié avec l’autorisation des Éditions des Intouchables, Montréal, Québec, Canada

  Translation Copyright © Baraka Books 2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Cover by Folio infographie

  Illustrations by Pierre Bouchard

  Book design by Folio infographie

  Epub conversion by Studio C1C4

  Library and Archives Canada Catalogue in Publishing

  Hotte, Sylvain, 1972-

  [Panache. English]

  Break away : Jessie on my mind / Sylvian Hotte ; Pierre Bouchard,

  illustrator ; Casey Roberts, translator.

  Translation of : Panache.

  ISBN 978-1-926824-05-5

  I. Bouchard, Pierre, 1974- II. Roberts, Casey, 1953- III. Title.

  IV. Title : Panache. English.

  PS8569.O759P35513 2011 jC843’.54 C2011-900418-6

  Legal Deposit, 2nd quarter, 2011

  Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec

  Library and Archives Canada

  Published by Baraka Books of Montreal. 6977, rue Lacroix

  Montréal, Québec H4E 2V4

  Telephone : 514 808-8504

  info@barakabooks.com

  www.barakabooks.com

  See www.barakabooks.com for news about the second title in Sylvain Hotte’s Break Away trilogy and about other great books.