Algoma

by Dani Couture

  ______________

  7:00 p.m. -11°C. Gusting winds.

  Blasts of cold air every time the door is opened.

  A beer bottle exploded against the wall behind the bar and rained down brown glass onto the counter and floor. The noise was deafening.

  “What the fuck!” Gaetan yelled, hands still protecting his head in case there was a second bottle. “What’s wrong with you?”

  His younger brother had shown up unannounced at the bar. It was the first time Gaetan had seen him in over four years, and the last time had been for mere seconds. A familiar face in a passing car. Since then, he’d heard that his brother had picked up work in a town a couple hours south of Le Pin. He was shocked by how old his brother looked now, hard lines carved into his face and several scars that hadn’t been there last time they spoke.

  “Why haven’t you returned Dad’s calls? Are you coming to Mom’s 60th birthday?” Simon asked.

  “Will you be there?”

  “Yes. That’s why I’m in town.”

  “Then I won’t be. Nothing’s changed unless you’ve changed.”

  Simon turned his back to his only brother and stared at the regulars who were trying to pretend they weren’t watching the fight between the bartender and the guy with the badly hooked nose.

  Simon eyed down the man in the leather vest who was sitting alone in the corner. The man was nearly twice his size. “What the fuck are you looking at, buddy?”

  Gaetan had severed ties with his family the same year he and Algoma married, and he had not set foot in his parents’ home since.

  “It’s political,” he’d told Algoma when she pleaded with him to invite his family over for Christmas dinner one year.

  “You don’t even read the paper or watch the news. How do you have politics?” she shot back.

  The two brothers sat on opposing sides of the sovereignty debate. After a physical confrontation on the front lawn that had resulted in Simon’s broken nose, their mother had banned all talk of politics in the house. Instead of resolving or avoiding the subject, Gaetan ignored everyone involved and even those on the peripheries, like his sister.

  “And what about Mary?” Simon asked.

  Gaetan visibly winced as he took a sip of the gin buck he was nursing behind the bar.

  Simon grinned knowing he’d hit a nerve. “She still thinks you’re going to call or come home one day.” He wiped some glass shards off the bar onto the floor. Emboldened by his brother’s silence, he carried on. “You need me more than you think you do. And if you really didn’t want to know us anymore, you could have moved away. It’s up to you to leave, not us.”

  “Out now,” Gaetan said.

  Simon smiled and waited another full minute before standing up.

  The man in the corner half stood up, but Gaetan waved him down. He turned back to his brother. “Leave,” he said.

  Simon stood up and headed toward the exit. As he put his hand on the door, he looked back at Gaetan. “I’ll tell Mary you said hi,” he said, and ducked to avoid the highball glass his brother launched at him. Simon laughed. “Same delayed fuse you’ve always had. You’ve never had good timing.” And with that, he was gone.

  Shaking, Gaetan walked over to the jukebox and dropped in several coins. He punched in a series of numbers from memory; however the music did little to drown out the sound of his brother’s voice still ringing in his ears.

  If he could have done it differently, he would have.

  Ferd snapped another cedar twig and tossed it onto the snow to join the others he’d already thrown there. It was Sunday and he’d been outside since the early afternoon, holed up inside an opening in the cedar hedge. It was dark now, almost time for bed. He ignored that he couldn’t feel the tips of his toes and fingers anymore. He’d been sitting on a piece of cardboard on top of the snow for hours. He wiped his dripping nose with his snow-crusted mitt and tossed another twig onto the pile. Under the weak light from the back porch light, he stared at the unfinished note in his lap. He didn’t know how to say he was sorry for all he’d done.

  Ferd looked up: a constellation of blank notes suspended in the branches around him. Each folded into a fortune teller with no fortune in it. No message.

  For the most part, Ferd tried to tow the line when people, even his family, talked about his brother in the past tense. He never told anyone about the notes he sent to Leo. They would never understand. Instead, he quietly slipped his messages down drains, folded them into small paper boats and left them in the washing machine, tied them to rocks and dropped them to the bottom of the river, flushed them down toilets at school.

  What he couldn’t tell anyone was that a part of him worried that his brother stayed away because he was mad at him. He thought of the ways he’d hurt his brother in the past, how he’d undermined everything Leo had wanted for himself. There was the incident with the killdeer egg, and how it had changed everything between them. Ferd didn’t know why he’d done what he had, his actions had come faster than the thoughts behind them. He only knew that he’d wanted to hurt his brother, and he had. Where he was hard and loud, Leo was soft and quiet. Incapable of dealing with a force like his brother. That everyone took to Leo only made it worse. No one looked at him the way they looked at his brother even though they had the same face. A wash of shame coloured his neck and cheeks, and then finally he wrote: It will be different this time. Come home.

  Gaetan arrived home while the sun was still down, the darkest blue lightening the eastern sky. Still upset by his brother’s appearance, and fuzzy from the whiskey shots he and the vested man had downed at closing, he fumbled with his keys at the door, scraping paint off the wood as he tried to get his key in the lock.

  Once finally inside, he leaned against the closed door and shut his eyes. After kicking off his boots, he walked down to the basement where he lay down on the hard carpet beside Ferd’s bed. He was drunk enough, tired enough, that if he tried to imagine that his remaining son was twelve-year-old Simon, he could. It was the last time he could recall things being good, that he had someone he thought he would be close to forever.

  ______________

  10:47 a.m. -19°C. Wind N, light.

  Car frozen shut. An iceberg in the driveway.

  Le Pin was located two hundred and forty kilometres northwest of Quebec City and was linked to the south end of the province by a single aging highway. A thin ribbon of crumbling asphalt that regularly failed those looking to leave town after heavy rains or snow. The town itself was roughly the shape of a pentagon. A fortress of stacked duplexes, small brick bungalows, a hospital, a mall, and a pulp and paper mill to keep the wilderness back. Thick boughs pressed against hard wood fences. If only so there was a place with an unobstructed view, the town had been built alongside the Charles River. The Charles was a steeply banked and deep river that, after being sieved by two generating stations, emptied into the St. Lawrence.

  Just north of Le Pin, four smaller rivers fed into the Charles; south of town, another river joined the spill from the rest. Seen from air, the network of rivers looked like a hawk’s claw clutching a treed mass of earth, threads of logging roads trailing behind it.

  While provincial signs were staked at the town’s north and south borders, it was the wet egg smell from the pulp mill that greeted visitors first, that seeped into lungs and clothes. Set at the north edge of town, the pulp mill rose like a silver smoking castle. A quarter of the town—roughly twenty-five hundred people—worked in forestry. It was a town of injury lore. Splinters and stitches. Falling trees and head injuries. Slips and chainsaws.

  The pulp mill was the tallest structure in town, its jagged profile visible from the Beaudoins’ front yard. Their one-storey brick home had been cheaper because it stood so close to the mill. Algoma and Gaetan had bought the house thinking they’d move to the south end of town one day. T
he nice part of town. Until then, along with the mill, they lived on Le Pin’s unofficial northern border. Only several houses and a gas station beyond their house, civilization wound down to two hundred kilometers of forest until the last clutch of villages rose up. Industry’s last gasp. Communities living on the edge of the map.

  “We should go up north this summer,” Ferd said. He kicked the back of the driver’s seat.

  “Would you stop it,” Gaetan said, palm flat on the top of the steering wheel. “We are up north. How much further you want to go?”

  Ferd rattled off the names of several villages north of Le Pin.

  Algoma looked over her shoulder. “You forgot Pike Falls.”

  Gaetan laughed. “Does that even count as a village? Twenty people live there. Compared to them, we’re big time. Hell, we even have a hospital. This is big city living.”

  “Watch the road,” Algoma said. She twisted her gloved hands nervously in her lap, the green leather worn down to the beige lining at her fingertips from her constant fidgeting. It had snowed the night before, the silvery powder kind that left the roads slippery even after they’d been plowed. New snow crunched beneath the tires.

  “The snow’s talking,” Ferd said, pressing his ear to the cold window.

  Algoma asked him what it was saying. Call and response. The same routine they’d been doing since Ferd had been old enough to talk. Only the answer ever changed.

  Ferd paused. “It’s saying it wants a doughnut.”

  “Well, tell it that it can have a doughnut if it stays with us at the market,” Algoma said.

  Ferd kicked the back of the driver’s seat again. “Fine.”

  Gaetan looked at his son in the rear-view mirror, his eyes thin black slits. “Or not.”

  Ferd turned away and looked out the window. Row upon row of stacked duplexes that varied little from street to street. It looked like every building in town had been built in the same year, each tired in the same way: sagging porches and rusting metal staircases that led to the upper units. When they passed a mint green duplex with two empty urns on either side of the ground floor unit’s front door, Ferd pounded the window with his mitt. “Can Aunt Soo come, too?”

  “Maybe next time,” Algoma said. She glanced at her sister’s house as the car slid by. She could picture Soo’s yarn-strewn couch. Several afghans in progress. It was nearly impossible to extract Soo from her house in the winter, the clicking of her knitting needles counting down the seconds until spring.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, girl,” Gaetan yelled. He commanded the car to stop as it slid into the middle of the intersection.

  “Gae—” Algoma choked, her hands on the dashboard.

  “We’re good, no cars. No cars.” Gaetan smiled. Algoma did not. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said, putting a hand on her thigh. She stiffened under his touch.

  Ferd yelled, “Look, look!”

  Gaetan and Algoma turned their heads to the right. A bride, groom, and seven wedding party members stood on the steps of St. Alphonse church while a photographer in a massive parka snapped photos. Iced taffeta and crinoline. The church was one of a half dozen in town in competition with one another, each steeple reaching higher than the last, like children raising their hands in a classroom where there was only one right answer.

  “We should go more often,” Algoma said, but she didn’t mean it. It was a resolution she made every year, but never kept with the exception of midnight mass and maybe Easter if she felt guilty enough.

  Gaetan pulled the car into the market’s parking lot and parked in one of the only empty spaces left. He undid his seat belt and took the keys out of the ignition. “Now how about some doughnuts, then?”

  The market was only open one day a week: Saturday. Vendors from the area and even a couple hours away ritually converged upon the building to staff the same booths they had for years. Glowing towers of jarred honey. Fat-speckled sausage links hanging from large silver nails. Frosted baked goods carefully arranged under glass. An easy-listening radio station playing over the loud speakers.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Gaetan said, pouring himself a small paper cup of rum punch. A table with two huge punch bowls was set up at the entrance to the market. Every year, early in the New Year, the market offered complimentary rum punch and a second bowl of fruit punch for the kids. From our families to yours. Health and happiness in the New Year.

  Algoma crossed her arms. “It’s only eleven in the morning.”

  “They wouldn’t put it out if they didn’t want us to enjoy it,” he said, and poured a second cup. “C’mon and have some with me.” He handed her the cup.

  Algoma softened and accepted the punch. She brought the cup to her mouth and sipped, almost choking from the sting of cheap rum against her throat.

  “Can I have one, too?” Ferd placed his hands in front of his chest like a begging dog. “The good one?”

  “I don’t think so.” Algoma drained her cup and tossed it into the garbage can beside the table.

  “Three points,” Gaetan cheered. “The lady is a champ.”

  “Stop it,” she said, but she was smiling again.

  Gaetan saw the opportunity and slipped his arm around her waist and kissed her. It had been so long since they’d kissed that her lips felt foreign to him, but good. Encouraged, he pulled her closer.

  Self-conscious, Algoma laughed and pushed him away and slapped his chest. “Enough!”

  Ferd tugged on his mother’s jacket. “Doughnuts?”

  Gaetan poured himself another cup of punch and raised it in the air. “One for the road!”

  Arms laden down with bags of bread, cheese, meat, and winter squash, Ferd, Gaetan, and Algoma stood in front of their favourite bakery stand, the highlight of every visit. Under the home-made Plexiglass cover were an assortment of cakes, pies, and pastries. The doughnuts were kept on a painted wood shelf behind Mrs. Walschots. She was a Dutch immigrant who’d married a local man and moved to town thirty years ago. People in town still referred to her as “new.”

  “Three dozen doughnuts,” Ferd said, as politely as he could muster. “Please.”

  “He means we’ll take a dozen,” Algoma corrected, and handed over a five-dollar bill.

  Mrs. Walschots took the money and tucked it into her apron. “What kind, Leo? Sugar or maple?”

  “Ferd. It’s Ferd,” Algoma said, too quickly.

  Gaetan looked at the floor.

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Mrs. Walschots said, her face reddening. “I’m so sorry. Here, let me add an extra maple one. For Ferd.”

  By the time Gaetan pulled the car into the driveway, the plastic bag the doughnuts had come in was empty. Ferd’s hand prints were fossilized onto the back window, ice-hard syrupy prints that Gaetan would promise to wash off for weeks.

  Algoma threaded the grocery bags onto her arms and walked toward the house, the bags scraping against the bricks. She thought about the market. It was the most time the three of them had spent together in months. Gaetan ran up from behind her and opened the door. “Madam,” he said, and gave her a dramatic bow.

  Algoma nodded and walked inside, not stopping to take off her boots before putting the groceries in the kitchen. Ferd ran inside after her, and, to Algoma’s surprise, he started to put the groceries away, a job he normally shirked. He avoided housework whenever he could, so when he put the squash in the fridge, she did not correct him.

  After a dinner of roasted chicken, potatoes, and salad, Gaetan sat down on the couch and wrote in his weather journal, the television on in the background. Algoma cleared the rest of the plates and wiped down the table. Instead of doing the dishes, she sat down beside her husband and put her head on his shoulder. Gaetan switched the channel to her favourite show.

  “Going downstairs,” Ferd said, stomping down the stairs to his black-an
d-white twelve-inch television. A find from The Shop, the second-hand store where Algoma worked. “Goodnight.”

  Algoma and Gaetan said goodnight back.

  Gaetan muted the television.

  Algoma stretched her legs out on the coffee table, her hand now resting on his thigh.

  Gaetan switched off the television, looked at Algoma, got up, and went into his bedroom.

  Algoma followed.

  ______________

  6:58 p.m. -17°C. Wind NW, strong.

  Frost spreading like road maps across the window.

  The cement floor in the back room of The Shop where Algoma sat was cold and uncomfortable. She was surrounded by a circle of plastic laundry baskets that were bowed with age and use, clothes spilling out where the faux weave was broken in places. The five baskets behind her were full of unsorted newly donated clothing; the five baskets in front of her empty and neatly labelled: women’s pants, men’s pants, women’s tops, men’s tops, and children’s clothes. Her lap held a treasure trove of assorted accessories. A long, braided, gold metallic belt with an oversized black patent leather buckle, a silver cross pendant with a large rhinestone in the middle of it, a neon blue umbrella with bright yellow plastic handle in the shape of a duck’s head, and a white balaclava with a small cigarette burn below the left eye. A crisp black hole with a dirty yellow halo.

  The balaclava was the kind the snowmobile drivers around Le Pin used to wear as soon as there was enough snow to ride; however, since most drivers had switched to Neoprene masks, The Shop’s collection of acrylic balaclavas grew unchecked like mice. The store’s owner, Josie, was sure this was going to be a banner year for snow and The Shop would “clean up” in the balaclava department. “Everyone needs a spare. Neoprene rips.”

  “Hoarder,” Algoma said.

  “Hoarder who owns the store you work for,” Josie replied.

  Algoma had worked at The Shop, a second-hand store in the middle of town, for almost a decade. It was time enough to see some of the same items make second and third rounds on the floor. She sorted the incoming clothes during the week and sometimes tended the till on weekends when Josie took some needed time off. The pay was modest, but it was enough to furnish Algoma’s refrigerator with food and her family with clothes.