Gil Marsh

by A. C. E. Bauer

  His thoughts were going in circles. What did he want? Gil wasn’t sure, but returning home was what he didn’t want. He needed to leave Montreal, well before his parents got here. He might have already stayed in the city too long.

  He closed his eyes. He had to head north tomorrow. Whether or not there was an immortal man, it was where he needed to go.

  The next morning, Adèle pulled out her laptop and located Le Gros-Curé for him.

  “The best way will be the bus,” she said. “You can get a pass—Québecpass, it’s called. It’s like the European rail pass. You pay almost two hundred dollars, but you can use it as much as you want for four months.”

  She unplugged the computer. “I go by the station this morning—I have an interview a block away. I can help you get it, if you want.”

  Gil thought about it. That would leave him about twenty-five dollars—enough to stay in a youth hostel for one night or at a campground for a few nights. He’d find a cash job somewhere and make ends meet. With the pass, he’d be able to travel Quebec for the next four months and sleep on the bus if he needed to. A place to sleep, plus travel. That worked.

  “Is there a youth hostel in Le Gros-Curé?” he asked. He remembered seeing several dozen listed for the province when he had looked them up at the library. But he had focused on the ones in Montreal and couldn’t remember the names of the other towns.

  “It’s a big-enough village. There should be one.”

  Her smile lit up her face. She really was beautiful, Gil thought.

  “Okay.”

  He packed his few belongings. Despite Adèle’s generosity, he felt as if he had been cooped up in a cave. Leaving her apartment came as something of a relief. The sun shone, and they decided to walk. Adèle took him past tree-lined, crowded streets and commercial avenues, and at one point made him turn around.

  “Le stade,” she said.

  She pointed to a building in the distance that looked like an enormous horseshoe crab with a large column leaning over its back. He had seen photographs in his parents’ tourist guides.

  “The Olympic Stadium,” he said.

  Adèle nodded.

  That was a place for athletes. As he had been. As Enko had been, too. He turned his back to the site.

  Adèle must have caught his mood because she took his arm in hers. “Pardon. I’m sorry. It’s just, the building is so famous.…”

  Gil forced a smile. “It’s okay. Let’s go.”

  When they arrived at the bus station, Adèle stopped a few yards from the teller. “Now you can ask him for the Québecpass, but you also ask for the ticket for Le Gros-Curé—they issue a separate voucher after the pass is bought.”

  Gil nodded.

  “In French you say …” She enunciated a few sentences. She spoke slowly, but there were too many words, and Gil could make no sense of them. He tried to repeat what she said, but kept tripping up and didn’t know what he was saying.

  Adèle shook her head. “You not follow.”

  Gil gave her a sheepish smile.

  “That okay,” she said. “We do it together. Okay?”

  Relief. “Okay.”

  They approached the teller. Adèle began speaking to the young man in rapid French. She smiled her beautiful smile and the young man smiled back. They talked back and forth, Adèle posing questions, the young man replying and asking several in return.

  After a few minutes Adèle turned to Gil. “He wants to know if you go to Le Gros-Curé today because he can issue the ticket with the pass.”

  Gil nodded. The sooner he left town, the better. Adèle resumed speaking to the teller. The man clicked at his terminal. He said something more, and Gil understood “Gros-Curé.”

  Adèle turned again. “He asks if you want a one-way passage or round-trip.”

  “One-way.”

  Gil might return, but not anytime soon. He knew that. Enko’s grave would still be here, and by the time he had found the immortal man, he’d have found a way to track down the grave without tipping off his parents.

  Adèle spoke some more. The printer produced paper. The young man said something else.

  “With tax, it’ll be one hundred ninety-seven and …” She turned to the young man and asked something. He replied. Adèle translated, “Fifty-five cents.”

  Gil took out his wallet. Was he sure he wanted to do this?

  The teller spoke to Adèle. She looked at Gil. “He says the next bus will be in forty minutes. The one after is this evening.”

  That was too late! Gil needed to leave Montreal as soon as possible. He gave Adèle ten twenty-dollar bills. As he stowed the wallet in his pouch, she handed money over and chatted with the teller. A minute later, she stepped aside and walked to a bench. She gave Gil several coins, a ticket for Le Gros-Curé and a long card—the Québecpass. In a corner of the card opposite the provincial flag and French text were the handwritten words “23 décembre.” A blue seal had been stamped over the date.

  “That’s the expiration date,” Adèle explained. “December twenty-third.”

  “Thank you,” Gil said.

  “The man said you need to present the Québecpass at the station to get a ticket to your next destination.”

  Gil nodded.

  They found a fast-food vendor in the station, and Adèle ordered him a poutine. She refused to let him pay. “A good trip needs a good meal,” she said.

  They finished their late breakfast just a few minutes before he was supposed to board.

  “Thank you,” he told her again. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  She waved and smiled. “De rien.”

  Gil’s ride north was uneventful. The bus was only half-full and he had both seats to himself. About a third of the way into the trip, they entered a mountainous landscape—hills really, but with spectacular valleys and tall cliffs. They pulled into towns along the way—Saint-Jérôme, Saint-Sauveur—one saint after another. The houses were unassuming, and the stretches of small businesses, one following the other, reminded him of the Post Road near home.

  Sainte-Agathe. Saint-Faustin.

  The hills crowded in now. Trees showed some fall colors, while green ski slopes cut ribbons into the hillsides.

  Saint-Jovite.

  They followed a rust-colored river flanked by farms, which meandered in a valley. Wide sandy beaches filled half the watercourse at the bends. They’d be a nice place to spend a summer day, Gil thought.

  La Conception.

  Hay bales, gathered into plastic rolls, dotted the fields. The hills were lower now but still rolled on, east and west.

  Le Gros-Curé. Finally.

  They pulled up at an intersection.

  “Is this the bus stop?” Gil asked.

  “The only one,” the driver said.

  Gil thought himself fortunate that the driver spoke English.

  Hitching his duffel, Gil disembarked next to a seedy motel. He took a moment to set his bearings. A bronze statue of a very fat priest stood across the street, surrounded by a little park. Just past the motel, the cross street led to a bridge over the river. A few shops and a bank were sandwiched between modest houses in the several blocks on the other side of the highway.

  Gil took one look at the motel and decided that he’d prefer inquiring at one of the shops. He crossed over and came to a store with a big sign overhead: “Quincaillerie.” A variety of knickknacks were in the window, in addition to paint cans, brushes, a few tools and some fishing equipment. He stepped in, and a small-built, middle-aged gentleman greeted him with an offer of help.

  “Bonjour! Je peux vous aider?”

  “Oui. But … uh, do you speak English?” Not for the first time, Gil wished that he spoke more French, or that he had thought to bring a dictionary.

  “Of course,” the man said. His Québécois accent was very mild.

  “I’m looking for the youth hostel,” Gil said.

  “Youth hostel?”

  “Right. You know, wh
ere students can stay?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Rooms are usually very cheap,” Gil continued. “And you can get a bunk and a shower.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Le Gros-Curé doesn’t have one.”

  Adèle had told him the village probably did! “Are you sure? Maybe it’s called something else?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” the man said. “I know what a youth hostel is. We don’t have one.”

  “But Quebec has lots of them!”

  The man pulled at an ear. “Well, uh … yes. But not in Le Gros-Curé. Maybe in Montréal.…”

  “I just came from Montreal!”

  The man pointed to the bridge. “There is camping if you go across the river and down a few kilometers.…”

  Gil didn’t really want to camp. Although the day had been dry, clouds had begun to roll in. He worried that it might rain before morning. He’d prefer a place with some shelter. “Isn’t there anywhere I can get a bed for the night?”

  The man’s face lit up. “The old hotel, across that way, or the motel on the main road.”

  Gil chose the hotel. The building looked like a big cement block with windows—almost featureless. The word “Hôtel” in fading paint indicated its entrance. The lobby was completely nondescript: a counter and a few chairs. A slim woman who reminded him of Adèle sat behind the counter, reading a paperback while snapping chewing gum. She didn’t look up until Gil put his arm on the Formica countertop.

  “Oui?” she said.

  “Uh … do you speak English?”

  Unlike the gentleman from the quincaillerie, she seemed offended by the question. She puckered her lips as if the gum had turned sour all of a sudden. “A little.”

  “I was wondering if you have a room available.”

  She spent a second appraising Gil, taking in his tousled looks, his bag, his shirt. “Yes.”

  “How much would it be for one night?”

  “Sixty dollars,” she said.

  Sixty dollars! That was more than he had. “Uh … do you have any cheaper ones?”

  The woman concentrated on her book. “Non. That is the cheapest.”

  Gil decided to try the motel next to the bus stop.

  The man behind the counter spoke English almost as fluently as the first gentleman.

  “For how many hours?”

  “For the night,” Gil said.

  How many hours? What kind of a motel was this? The man, with his thin mustache twitching, looked Gil over.

  “Seventy dollars,” he said.

  Gil’s stomach sank. “Is there anywhere cheaper?”

  “You can go camping, across the bridge and down a little way.”

  Gil found himself back on the main highway. What was he going to do? Maybe Le Gros-Curé was just too small a town. Perhaps in a bigger one, they’d have a hostel.

  The man from the quincaillerie walked out of his shop carrying a large box. He accompanied an older woman to a car parked a few yards away. They chatted in French as he stowed the box in the trunk. He waved when she pulled away, then turned and, to Gil’s surprise, crossed the street.

  “You look lost,” he said. “You need a ride to the camping?”

  Gil looked down at his shoes. “I was wondering. Is there a bigger town than Le Gros-Curé around here?”

  “Of course. If you go south, there is Saint-Jovite—though they call it Mont-Tremblant now.”

  “How about north?”

  The man scratched his chin. “L’Annonciation—about twelve kilometers.”

  “Does the bus go there?”

  “I’m pretty sure. You need a ticket, though.”

  Gil was thinking fast. If he caught the next bus, he could use his pass, ride up to L’Annonciation and set himself up there. “Do you know when the next bus is?”

  “In a few hours. But I don’t know the exact timetable.”

  “Thanks! I’ll wait for it.”

  The man cocked his head. “It will be some time.”

  “Well, is there somewhere close where I could get something to eat?”

  “There’s a casse-croûte across from the war memorial.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gil followed the man’s directions, and the little fast-food stand was very close—just around the bend on the highway. No one spoke English at the stand. But Gil recognized “Poutine” on the board—there seemed to be several varieties. He guessed “italienne” must mean “Italian.”

  “Poutine Italian,” he told the woman at the counter.

  She handed him a Styrofoam dish with french fries, cheese curds and a meat-and-tomato sauce. He grabbed a few napkins and decided to cross over to the war memorial: a large army battery gun next to a parking lot and some picnic tables. He caught a glimpse of the river through bushes, down a little hill. He was grateful for the food—filling, if greasy. He dumped his trash into one of the cans, walked past the public restrooms and decided to follow the boardwalk along the shore. It went out to an overlook over a waterfall. The water level was so low and the boulders so large, he heard more than saw the river between stones. A plaque with old photos of settlers and buildings from the area, titled “Rivière Rouge,” gave tourist information, all in French.

  A path along the river headed back to the bus stop. Gil followed it. He stopped under the statue of the priest. From this angle, Gil had a clear view of the traffic rumbling down the hill from the south. Some vehicles turned and drove over the bridge. Most curved the other way along the main highway. He planted himself on a bench under the statue, with his bag next to him.

  The place felt deserted. One man crossed the bridge. A woman entered one of the houses near the bank. But mostly, Gil watched a steady, though not too heavy, flow of highway traffic. He briefly thought to check his phone for the time, but decided against it. His parents knew by now that he wasn’t coming home. They’d be calling him. Best he not even see the messages.

  Light had begun to fade when Gil noticed what looked like a bus cresting the tall hill. He rallied and ran to the motel. The bus almost didn’t stop—it had passed Gil without slowing down. Luckily the light turned red, and Gil was able to sprint up to the door and knock on it.

  The driver seemed surprised.

  “Are you taking passengers?” Gil asked.

  “Pardon,” the driver said. He was a young man—in his early twenties, Gil guessed. “My first week. I lose track of the stops.”

  “It’s okay,” Gil said. “I’d like to go to L’Annonciation.”

  The driver held out a hand. “Ticket, please.”

  Gil handed him his pass.

  “Qu’est-c’est ça?” The driver clearly had never seen anything like it.

  “A Québecpass,” Gil said.

  The driver looked at it, turned it over and handed it back to Gil. “Not a ticket.”

  “But it’s good for four months!”

  “Sorry. It’s not a ticket. You get a ticket, then I can give you a ride.”

  Of course. Adèle had told him he needed to get the ticket first. Damn.

  Gil smiled, turning on the old charm and hoping that the driver would take pity on him. “It’s just like one. Couldn’t you just give me a ride this time?”

  The driver wasn’t moved. “Please get off now. You need a ticket for a ride.”

  An older woman sitting in the front row gave Gil a disapproving, wilting gaze. She clearly thought he was some kind of delinquent.

  “Where can I get the ticket?” Gil asked.

  The driver pointed behind him. “At the motel.”

  Gil disembarked and stared at the retreating bus until it disappeared around the bend. Slightly defeated, he entered the motel’s rank entrance.

  “You want a room now?” the man behind the counter asked.

  Gil shook his head. “You sell bus tickets?”

  “Yes,” the man replied. “But the next one is tomorrow morning. You want to go to Montréal?”

  “L’Annonciation,” Gil sai
d.

  “Ah.”

  The man typed information on a keyboard and a printer clicked and spat out a ticket.

  “Eight dollars and seventy-three cents,” the man said.

  Gil took out his Québecpass and handed it to the man.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s a Québecpass,” Gil said.

  The man handed it back to Gil. “Eight dollars and seventy-three cents, please.”

  Gil left the pass on the counter. “This is supposed to cover it. It’s good for four months.”

  The man picked up the pass again and examined it. He flipped it over under the light. “Where you get this?” He sounded suspicious.

  “Montreal.”

  “I mean,” the man said, “where in Montréal?”

  “At the bus station. A friend got it for me.”

  “Oh.” The man placed the pass on the counter again. “And how much did you pay this friend?” He pronounced “friend” as if it had quotation marks around it.

  Gil felt the back of his neck prickle—a hint of worry creeping in. “Just under two hundred dollars.”

  The man whistled. “That’s a lot for a piece of paper from a computer.”

  Gil frowned.

  “Listen,” the man said. “There is no such thing as a Québecpass. Your friend played a trick on you.”

  “But she said that it’d be good for four months. Anywhere in Quebec. Like a Eurail pass.”

  “We aren’t Europe.” There was pity in the man’s tone.

  Gil stared at the pass, not believing what he had been told. “So what do I do with this, then?”

  The man lifted his hands, palms up. “Throw it out. Save it for the police. Keep it as a mémento. It’s not good for much.”

  Gil grabbed the pass and crumpled it, anger slowly rising as he realized what had happened. Adèle had played him—played him thoroughly. She had stolen most of his cash, two hundred and twenty dollars’ worth. In exchange he had gotten two nights’ stay in a cave and one poutine. Her pretty smiles and generosity had all been a front. What a fool he had been.