“And you? I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Norbert Desmarais, your uncle,” the man said. “You should know who I am.”
Maurice dropped the scissors. He bent to retrieve them. Where the man had walked, wet smudges trailed across the clean tile floor. The old man’s feet were thickly caked with Red River gumbo and he was splattered to the knees with hardened mud the shape of clams which clung to the wool fabric of his pants. When Maurice stood up, his heart thrashed against his rib cage.
“Well,” Maurice said. “Long time, no see. What’s bringing you here to Agassiz?”
“The digging,” Desmarais said. “I heard you’re the person who made the digging happen.”
Franklin shifted impatiently beneath the barber cloth. “We’re the ones doing the digging. What’s it to you?”
Maurice moved slowly, his actions a cover for his confusion. He began cutting hair once again. “If you’re speaking of the dike, then it was my idea, to be sure. But it was put before the town and voted on in a fair manner.”
“And you know where they’re bringing the earth from?”
“Well, I’m not certain, but the municipality owns several —”
“It’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“They’re bringing the earth from Grande Pointe. Land that belonged to your family. Something should be done about it.”
Maurice grew aware of the silence in the barbershop. Keen interest was being taken in this conversation. “I’ve never lived at Grande Pointe,” he said quietly. Maurice Lafrenière has a good head, it was often said. He kept everything going straight in this crooked place. He was calm now, and had the situation in control. “I believe my mother’s relations once lived in Grande Pointe, but that was years ago.”
“Trees,” the old man said. He jerked his arm up to the window where cars and trucks parked at an angle against the sidewalk. The glare of the red sun made the windshields look solid, like a sheet of hot metal. A truck engine revved suddenly as another load of heavy earth slid into place on the dike.
“Eh?”
“From here to the river. Trees. Do you remember?”
“Absolutely,” Maurice said and laughed. He scanned the bench where the men sat waiting. Above their heads was a sign which read: WORK LIKE HELEN B. HAPPY. In two seconds, he’d ask the man to leave.
“Same as Grande Pointe. Trees, from here to the river. All gone. They cut the trees and haul away the dirt so that they can pile it up around the town of Agassiz.”
“Well, Uncle, I don’t know about any land. But even if what you say is the case, then that was well before my time. There are no records. The land belongs to the municipality now. What can I do?”
“And your tongue? That too was taken away long ago?”
“My tongue is rusty, to be sure. But it’s there when I need it.”
“Speak to me then,” the old man said in French.
Maurice glanced about. “It’s not polite,” he said.
“When you’re in Rome, you do what the Romans do,” Franklin said.
“Absolutely,” Maurice agreed.
Desmarais ignored the comment. “And your children? What about them? They are also too polite to speak French?”
“There’s no need to,” Maurice said. “What this gentleman says is true.”
“Ah. You think no further than the end of your thick nose. There’s no need. There’s no need for you to come and take back your land either. You have all this,” he said. He moved in a circle as his black eyes took in the whole room for the first time and came to rest on the buffalo head. Maurice had rescued it from behind the curling rink after flood clean-up and had mounted it above the plate glass mirror. He used it to hang his hat on. The old man smiled and then began to laugh. His shoulders shook violently and he leaned against the barber chair to support himself.
The customers’ interest in the man had changed to wariness. Maurice sensed it. Desmarais began coughing. His high narrow chest heaved beneath his plaid shirt.
“Calm yourself,” Maurice said. He steeled himself against the man’s odour and taking him by the elbow, steered him over to a chair beneath the window, well away from the waiting customers.
“That’s you,” the old man whispered and pointed at the buffalo head. “You’re useless. You allow people to hang their hats on you. They take away your land and it was your idea.”
Maurice was stung. “It’s necessary to build the dike,” he said. “Where would we be without one? This town could never survive another flood like the last one. And I for one don’t wish to go through that again.” Like a knife, he comes through the bush sideways, his mother had said. He remembered this uncle only dimly as being a kind of vagabond. He would appear suddenly as in a dream at their door with a rabbit or a string of fish. Stay well away from that one, she’d warned him. He’s more Indian than French.
“And you think a hill of dirt will stop the river?”
“But of course. It will be higher than the river will ever come.”
“Then I’ve wasted my time. You’re a foolish man. You will never have what is yours.”
“You can’t change history,” Maurice said in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Now go. Go and leave me be.
As though reading his thoughts, the old man got up from the chair. “You know nothing of history,” he said. “Did you know that your grandfather was a river man?”
Because his parents had died when he was a child, Maurice knew little about his relatives. He knew that his mother’s people had come long before the settlers to the area that was now Grande Pointe. That they had been both hunters and farmers along the river, squatting on a large piece of land north of Agassiz about thirty miles. La Grande Pointe de la Saline, it was called for a time and then shortened to Grande Pointe when a town formed. His father’s people had come from Quebec.
“Is that so?”
“It was during the time of the blue herons. Some say he rode those giant birds to the lake and back.”
Maurice hid his smile. “You don’t say? Rode the birds, eh?”
“And your great grandmother, she came from Buffalo Lake with ten children and a sick man. When he died, she kept herself and three families alive that winter with her snares.”
Maurice swatted at an imaginary fly. “Ancient history,” he said. “That has nothing whatsoever to do with me.”
The men on the bench looked up from their newspapers as Desmarais walked over to the door. “We’ll talk later,” he said. “I’ll wait for you at your house.”
Oh God. No. “Wait,” Maurice said. He could just see Mika’s expression. He’d never told her about his mother. He’d let her think that both his parents were French. He put his hand on the man’s arm. “I could get you a room here at the hotel,” he said. “If you want to stay.”
The old man stared at him for several moments. “You are saying I’m not welcome in your house?”
“Oh, it’s not that. It’s the little woman, she’s busy with the children.”
“You’re like a raven caught in a thorn bush,” Desmarais said. “I don’t expect that anything will ever come from you. Much flapping of wings and that is all.” He turned and left the barbershop as quietly as he’d come.
Maurice felt stricken, cut adrift. He wanted to follow the man, to explain. But his responsibilities kept him there. A newspaper crackled. Franklin cleared his throat impatiently. Maurice apologized for the delay. He picked up the clippers and went back to work.
The screen door opened suddenly.
“Hey, Franklin, you’ll never guess what we’ve found this time,” a workman said. “Come and see.”
Maurice followed along as the men ran down Main Street towards Agassiz Bridge and the ring dike. A group of them gathered on top of the unfinished dike in a circle, looking down at the ground. They were strange silhouettes against the red sky, motionless like granite headstones on a mound of black earth. Maurice didn’t scramble and hurry with them. He felt that h
e knew what it was that they’d found. There had been many strange things, artifacts, pieces of pottery, arrowheads. He stepped into the circle of men. On the ground before them, partially buried, was the remains of a human.
“I called the RCMP,” the workman said.
Maurice bent and examined the skull. It was porous and tinged brown from the earth. He felt sick. It could be the remains of one of his mother’s people. One of his own people. “This is old,” he said. “I guess these things happen when you’re working that close to the cemetery. There are many lost markers, old grave sites that we don’t know about.” He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. “But it’s a good thing you called the police. Once they come, we can get on and bury it.” He wished he knew something, anything, of his mother’s people. He felt his loss in his fingertips; something important had slipped away from him like water through fingers, and he would never get it back.
Later that night, Maurice stood on the fire escape of the Scratching Chicken Hotel and leaned with his elbows against the railing. He was a little too drunk to go home yet. From his station, he could look out across the roofs of the houses, the skeletal frames of fresh lumber of the new ones, the bright yellow boards piercing together the older houses and grain elevators beyond them and far beyond the grain elevators, trees that were just faint brush strokes against the purple sky.
A sudden clinking noise in the alleyway below jolted him. He grasped the metal railing tightly. “Who’s there?”
Since the flood, he scared easily. He often dreamed of drowning. Laurence Anderson emerged from the dark alleyway carrying two cartons of empty Coca-Cola bottles. He looked one way and then the other, failed to see Maurice above him, and ran down the street.
Maurice chuckled. It was just Johanna’s boy; the mongrel was stealing cigarette money again. The boy was about fourteen years, he guessed, and had that clumsy knock-kneed gait of the half-grown. Because he had in the past slept with Johanna, he looked for his own features in the boy’s face. But Laurence could be the kid of any one of dozens, he told himself. Maurice seemed to come upon him often in such out of the way places as the nuisance grounds, along the river, in the cemetery; and he was always alone, poking and turning things over. It was this roaming that reminded Maurice of himself.
Below him a fan churned out the smoky voices of the men in the parlour. There wasn’t one distinguishable voice, the sounds were all mixed together, churning. The hotel had a new sign, it was a blinking neon chicken that had given the hotel its name, “Scratching Chicken.” The chicken hunted and pecked out the words, EAT HERE, EAT HERE, EAT HERE. The sign, along with all the voices below him, mixed together as one, was to him a sign of progress. The town was booming. And he was part of it. He was accepted by the merchants along Main Street and it didn’t help him one damned bit when people like Desmarais appeared on the scene like a scruffy spring rabbit.
Your worship, he said to himself, his mood swinging abruptly, as a member of this here town council, I would like to say that I think the flood had its benefits. Yessiree. On behalf of the children, old ladies and dogs, I propose that we install traffic lights at the corner. Slow those city buggers down when they come whipping through on the highway. He unzipped his fly. He laughed aloud. Your worship, as a member of the council, and in the interests of the people, I wish to bring to your attention the fact that people are pissing from the fire escape at the back of the hotel. Plain damned shame. Something should be done about it. Give everyone an umbrella.
Below him, the fan ceased moving. Closing time. Time to go home to the old lady. She’d be asleep, curled like a fist under the blankets on her side of the bed. He swayed unsteadily as he made his way down the fire escape. Hang on, or you’re a goner, he told himself. When he got home, he’d peel himself free from his barber shirt, search for stray hairs in his neck and go to bed. And then, yessiree, by God, whether she was sleeping or not, he’d tell her about old man Desmarais and about his mother.
The following morning, with a vague memory of his dreams of strange-looking blue birds sweeping low on water, Maurice got up, pushed aside the curtains in the bedroom and looked down into the garden. The winds had dispersed the smoke and the sunlight was not red anymore. But the squealing and rumbling of machinery continued. As he drew on his pants, the smell of lovemaking rose from his crotch like the smell of a catfish left lying on the river bank. He would leave early, get a key for one of the rooms at the hotel and bathe. If he didn’t, his customers would know for sure what he’d been into last night. He knew Mika would be angry this morning. He wondered: to go straight down and apologize or let her think he didn’t remember what had happened? He chose to delay facing Mika. He would instead go into the basement and search for his boots. He’d been meaning to have new clickers put on them.
As Maurice searched the corners of the basement for his boots, he heard Mika’s feet slapping against the floor above his head and instantly he felt justified for his behaviour. The sound of her feet was as angry and unyielding as she’d been. She didn’t keep herself the way other women did either. No rouge or powder, not even to please him. In better moments he could admit that he actually preferred her unpolished face, but not this morning. He stood debating, get it over with. Go on up there. Or pretend it didn’t happen. He’d let himself get out of hand, to be sure. But part of it had been the beer, the other had been the old man coming to town. He heard the sounds of his children coming from every corner of the house. Too late. He’d have to wait.
“Well, how should I know where it is, you look for it.” Mika’s voice was raised suddenly, shattering the peacefulness of the basement.
“I did look for it,” Lureen answered.
“Must I come?” It was a threat.
Lureen’s tone matched her mother’s. “I said I looked and so I did. I’m not lying.”
“All right then, I’ll come,” Mika said and Maurice heard her feet slap angrily across the kitchen floor. “But I’m warning you, if I find that shoe of yours, I’ll give you such a smack for not looking for it properly. You have to get down on your knees when you look. You searched high and low, eh? We’ll see about that.”
She’s still angry, Maurice thought. If apologizing would make life easier for her, he would do it. He was not one to mind going out of his way for another. It would make life easier for the children as well.
“Okay, okay. I’ll look again,” Lureen said and the rooms were calm once again as though a gust of wind had passed through them and gone. Then there was a soft murmur like dry leaves; Truda’s voice, a halting search for words.
“I don’t know what could have happened to your crayons,” Mika said. Her voice was softer when she spoke to Truda. “Who would take them, a mouse?”
Peter the baby began to squall for attention. The remainder of their conversation was lost. Mika hurried across the kitchen. The cupboard door was opened, then closed. Maurice imagined her sprinkling puffed-wheat kernels across the tray for the baby to eat.
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her,” Mika said in a sing-song voice. The uneven legs of the highchair knocked against the floor as Mika jiggled it in time to her rhyme. “How are you this morning?” she asked the baby. “Eh? How is your little pumpkin, empty?”
Sharp rapid steps came from the corner of the dining room into the kitchen. Particles of dust floated downwards from the ceiling onto Maurice’s neck. He rummaged about behind the furnace, searching for his army boots.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Mika said, her voice harsh once again. “Get down on your hands and knees and you’ll find your shoe. You kids. Now sit and eat.”
It is only with the babies that she seems capable of gentleness, Maurice thought with sadness.
There were sounds of steps on the stairway as Betty came down from the top floor. “There you are, finally,” Mika said. “You’re always the last one. Today of all days to be late. Just when I’ve got so much to do. It’s the Wednesday Circle today and it’s my
turn to have them here and you’re late. Eat, while I braid your hair.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Mika sighed and it was felt all the way down Maurice’s spine. Mika sighed when she kneaded bread at the table, she sighed when it rained, she sighed when the sun shone. When he had come home last night, she’d sighed as she stood before the mirror in their bedroom, unwinding her dark hair. When he curled against her back beneath the blankets and searched for words to tell her, my mother was an Indian, she’d mistaken his intentions. She sighed and said, no. Leave me be. Not until you install the kitchen window. And the anger had come rushing, thick and violent. He’d wanted to smash into her breasts with his fists but instead, he’d taken her with force, without using precautions, with a grinding punishing force that he felt in his own muscles this morning. His heartbeat rose. He shook a cigarette loose from his package, struck his match against the basement wall. Today, he’d buy the lumber for the goddamned window and he would give her the morning sun.
“Have some cereal, even if you aren’t hungry. You’re the oldest. You set the example,” Mika said. “If you go off to school without eating, then they’ll want to, too.”
“I’m your example to the whole world,” Betty said. Maurice heard spoons clanking against bowls, saw mouths opening and closing, chewing, swallowing. He heard Sharon’s dry cough echo in the furnace pipes and Rudy, who leaned against the door at the top of the basement stairs, bumping his head against it, signalling his need to use the toilet. He saw his boots hanging from a nail behind the furnace. He heard chairs scrape against the floor as the children gathered up their books and got up to leave for school. He dusted the boots off and slung them over his shoulder. It was time to go up there. He climbed the stairs slowly, dreading the initial contact with Mika’s accusing eyes. If she had cried, anything, he would have been able to know how to approach her. This cold silence was another thing. He met Rudy on the stairs and ruffled his blond head playfully. “Don’t let the spiders get you, fella,” he said.
Mika stood at the kitchen cupboard with her back to him. She balanced the baby on one hip. She hadn’t rolled her hair up and it hung uncombed on her shoulders. He wanted to reach out and touch it. He liked seeing it hanging loose instead of rolled into that tight sausage ring at the back of her head. The first time she’d lain beside him, her head cradled into his shoulder like a small child, he thought that he’d never touched anything so fine and so soft as her hair. He took his sweater down from the wall behind the door. She heard the noise and turned. He steadied himself against her bitter tongue.
Agassiz Stories Page 3