by Peter Bowen
They looked at him and took less time to dust and peck.
Du Pré got closer.
The grouse became nervous and dashed off into the woods. Du Pré ran after them. They were fast runners. Du Pré was a little faster. He pounded over the thick needles. The grouse took flight, their wings booming. Du Pré threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired.
The grouse kept right on going.
I ought to shoot the bastards on the ground, Du Pré thought. It pissed him off to miss a shot.
He walked back to the car, stuffing another shell in the shotgun.
Just as he stepped out of the woods, four grouse boomed up from across the road, wings whirring, heading straight up. Du Pré shot twice and two birds folded up and fell.
I am some hot shit, Du Pré thought. He walked into the trees and picked the birds up, crumpled on the ground, the little wind ruffling their soft feathers.
He drove on to the end of the road and saw no more birds. He backed and filled at the Kelly hump that blocked the road and then headed back down, in no particular hurry. He got back home with an hour of sunlight to spare. He cleaned the birds, shucked their skins, and put the carcasses in salty water. He would bake them in aspic and then chill them overnight and they would be tender then, make wonderful sandwiches.
Shadows.
He went to the violin case and got out the slingshot.
He went down to the creek.
What about this, now? he thought, sending a stone in flight.
What about this?
Blood dropping from the sky? Long time ago.
CHAPTER 16
BART SHOWED UP, LOOKING chastened. Du Pré drove him home from the airstrip in Cooper, and Bart stared out the window. Once, Du Pré looked over, to see him wiping his eyes.
Du Pré was a good friend; he kept his mouth shut and waited.
“She didn’t tell me to go,” he said. “I suddenly realized I was acting like Gianni. So I told her about that. She just smiled at me and said she was a simple girl, really. So I took back most of the stuff. Said I’d go home for a while and think, I hadn’t had a lot of practice in being human.”
Du Pré laughed. After a while, Bart did, too.
“She has a week of vacation the second week of October and she’s going to come out here. At least I can send a plane for her.”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré. “Anytime you can avoid the Denver airport is better than a time you can’t.”
“I love her.”
This was not news to Du Pré. Under the embarrassment, Bart was very happy. He would go on being very happy till Madelaine lit into him ever so sweetly. But Madelaine was very smart about people. She’d fry Bart good but not burn him.
He is trying very hard, Du Pré thought. I am proud of my friend here.
Bart was building a modest log home with the help of Booger Tom and such ranch hands as were between tasks. The ranch had been running as a tax write-off for years; there were more hands than the place needed, but Bart refused to fire or lay anyone off. He had said time would shrink the crew.
But if a cowboy broke down within a hundred miles, they knew they could come here and work up a stake to go on.
Bart was well thought of among the cowboys.
“I will be glad when I can get that trailer out of here,” said Bart.
Most of the logs were stacked for the house’s sides. Then the rafters and rooftree had to be set and the place sealed off before the winter. Bart’s big dragline had been pressed into service to lift the logs, the bucket replaced with a ball, hook, and choker chain.
Booger Tom was sitting on the log pile, whittling and spitting tobacco. The old goat was out of another time, still wore the checked pants and custom high-topped boots and gigantic pure silk scarf—so dirty, it was hard to discern the pattern in it, true, but pure silk nonetheless.
“Shit,” said Bart, “I thought it’d all be done by now.”
“We wuz all too ignorant,” said Booger Tom. “We need a leader.”
Bart grinned and so did Booger Tom.
“The hands is all off working,” said Booger Tom, “but I expect a couple could come help tomorrow.”
“She is lookin’ good,” said Du Pré. He suddenly thought of the money of Bart’s he had. He fumbled for his wallet.
“Bart,” he said, “that lawyer, Foote there, he give me all this cash—I don’t know what for.”
Bart looked at the thick green wad.
“Oh, that,” he said finally, as though it took him a few moments to think up what it was.
“Yeah, this,” said Du Pré. He got annoyed when Bart did this, and then annoyed with himself for getting petty with Bart when the big man was just generously trying to help.
“I need some help here,” Bart said, groping. “You know I got to get this closed off before winter. So say thirty dollars an hour?”
Du Pré started to say that was more than double the going price for a tradesman around here, but he caught himself and nodded.
“I will go get my tools,” said Du Pré. “Or are you tired, maybe want to start in the morning?”
“Might snow tonight,” said Bart, looking at a pure blue sky.
Du Pré nodded and drove home. He dug out his belt and hammers and some huge chisels Catfoot had made out of old lumber-mill band-saw blades—called slicks—and his big chain saw, a line level, and some big pencils.
Bart probably had three of everything they needed, anyway.
They worked till very late, setting logs. Tomorrow they could put the last course up and peg it in, then begin to set the end rafters and the rooftree. ,
“You know, Bart,” said Du Pré, “with that big-ass dragline we could just build it down here and lift the whole thing up.”
Booger Tom snorted. He’d never seen it done that way, so it ought not to. Booger Tom knew what he knew, and what he didn’t know, he’d rather not, like most old cowboys.
“Thanks,” said Bart. “That’s the way to do it. Of course. We’d better measure the damn thing ten times before we start, though. If we lift it up there and it don’t fit…think of the shame.”
Du Pré was whipped when he got home.
This middle age, he thought. Catfoot never let it get to him. If I had to be a voyageur, I’d die. Paddle all the time, then carry everything on the portages, running from the snows, or running from the spring melt.
Life, she was very hard then.
Madelaine called. It was Friday night and she wanted to dance a little to the jukebox at the Toussaint bar.
Du Pré said sure. He felt like falling into bed.
He awoke next morning with a small hangover, a warm place in the bed where Madelaine had just been. He could hear her feeding her brood. They got up early even on a Saturday.
Bart would be working, for sure.
Du Pré pulled on his clothes and boots.
“You going to work for that Bart,” said Madelaine, not turning from what she was making on the stove, “so I come out maybe lunchtime and I give him a good bite on the ass, yes?”
Du Pré grunted noncommittally. Best not get in the way of fate, especially Bart’s.
He ate some bacon and eggs, filled a big jug with water, and went off. He sat in the car, letting the engine warm up, rolled a cigarette, and smoked. There was thick frost on the glass. The heater was good. When he finished the cigarette, he switched on the wipers, and the frost slid off. He got out and scraped the back window.
He drove out to Bart’s, parked and fished his toolset out of the big locking gang box.
Bart had rolled the last course of logs around and formed a rectangle with them. Then he and Du Pré took measurements several times and called them down to Booger Tom. Sides and then diagonals to make sure the thing was square.
They pinned the logs together with big steel bolts and lengths of pipe. After the thing was set, they would heat the green-ash pegs and drive them on in; the dried ash would take on water and swell and hold tight.
Ma
delaine showed up a little after lunch with a hot pan of rich lamb stew, a big jug of iced tea, and two loaves of the wonderful bread she made every Saturday morning. Good butter from the neighbor’s cows.
“Mmmm,” said Bart, savoring a mouthful of the stew. “How many bushels of garlic does this have in it?”
“Just a half,” said Madelaine. “You work my man too hard.”
“Huh?” said Bart.
“Yah,” said Madelaine. “You leave him in D.C. He has no money, has to walk the whole way back to the hotel.”
“Oh, god,” said Bart. “Just shoot me.”
“Eat more stew,” said Madelaine, “and shut up.”
On the way home, Du Pré saw old Benetsee walking down the road toward Toussaint. He stopped and the old man got in, and Du Pré handed over his tobacco pouch and papers to him.
He dropped Benetsee at the bar. Benetsee leaned back in the window and Du Pré just held up his hand and fished twenty dollars out of his jeans and gave it to him.
He will be asleep in Madelaine’s garden shed in the morning, Du Pré thought.
I will check the cot and blankets and pillow.
CHAPTER 17
DU PRÉ LOOKED AT THE letter again. It was still there.
The letter was from Lucky, the canoe builder, and it asked Du Pré to please come in the spring, along with Bart, to go on a trip down the Rivière de la Baleine. This was one of the rivers to be dammed.
They go and dam the River of the Whale, Du Pré thought. Well, that is about right.
Do this next late June, as soon as the ice is off the river. There were few settlements of Indians along the river, and no whites. They would have to either be flown out or spend a lot more time going around the shore, including James Bay, but they asked Du Pré to come and bring his fiddle.
“This is for us,” Lucky said at the end, “nothing to do with that bastard Chase. Just us bastards.”
Du Pré shrugged and got up. He didn’t have to decide right now. Maybe he had given enough blood to the insects of Canada. Maybe his head hurt too much.
I mention this to Bart, I end up going. I have to mention this to Bart, they asked me to. I could forget to mention it to Bart. No, I could not forget. I wish I was more of a bastard.
Du Pré reached for his coffee cup and winced. He’d driven one of the big chisels into the fork of his left hand. Fifty-two stitches. It was a dumb thing to have done and that hurt more. Never look away when you are using a sharp chisel.
Four days before, they had hooked the dragline’s cables to a cable cradle and lifted the roof, completely sheathed and shingled, onto the big log house. Bart held his breath. Du Pré held his breath.
“Won’t fit,” said Booger Tom sourly.
After a little banging and cussing, it fit, and they pegged the top course of logs in.
Bart took everyone out to dinner and gave everybody three days off.
“When something goes that well,” he explained, “I think we should stay away for a while and not piss off the spirits. This is big bunga-bunga.”
Shaping a joint, the last one that day, Du Pré had hit his hand.
Blood everywhere.
“Don’t bleed on my house!” Bart had yelled.
Du Pré laughed and made it down the ladder without fainting, which was the point.
On the way to get stitched up. Du Pré vomited.
“Eat another piece of that prime rib there,” Bart had said at the table, “fulla red blood cells.”
Du Pré had smiled wanly.
But this business on the Rivière de la Baleine, now, Du Pré wanted to go. He liked the name. He had liked Lucky and the other Quebec Indians. Shy people, people of the woods and shadows, who walked pigeon-toed and were only as Catholic as they had to be.
Du Pré drove out to Bart’s. Bunga-bunga or not, Bart was busy cleaning the place up. He’d built the rough casing frames for the windows and doors and chain-sawed through the logs. Roofed and with the holes cut the place was looking very good.
There were masons at work inside, laying up stone for the chimney and kitchen exhaust fan and services to go up through, the huge fireplace with the glass front and heat unit. It wasn’t a huge house, but it would be very comfortable.
Bart looked tanned and lean. He’d lost the watery alcoholic flesh he had carried for years. His eyes were bright. He smiled easily. Du Pré would catch a flicker of his old sadness sometimes, in the back of his eyes, but never for very long. Maybe it was something he should be sad for. He had lost a lot.
“The beautiful and wondrous Michelle Leuci arrives tomorrow afternoon,” said Bart.
“You have this done by then?” said Du Pré.
Bart ignored him, dunking of the beautiful Michelle Leuci.
“There is no place near here to get decent flowers,” Bart said suddenly.
“Bart,” said Du Pré, “you go and get Madelaine and she will find you some dungs from around here for a bouquet.”
Bart looked at Du Pré for a moment, uncomprehending, then he got it and smiled.
Jesus Christ, Du Pré thought, he has got it very bad over that lady. She seems like a nice lady but I think she must be very tough to do what she does and still be very beautiful.
My friend here has been lonely so long, he doesn’t know what it’s like not to be.
“Just don’t buy her the fucking county, Bart,” said Du Pré. “She want some of you, I think.”
Du Pré saw the sadness flicker, a black flame in the back of Bart, one faint ripple of pain behind his eyes.
“You are some nice guy,” said Du Pré. “Just you don’t start spending tons of money on her, act like that’s all you know how to do. Take her for a horseback ride.”
Bart was a very good horseman.
“Take her up on the bench, look for petrified wood.”
Du Pré rattled off a list of things the poorest person in Toussaint could do. Bart listened carefully.
“Yeah,” he said finally, “I don’t know a lot of things, Gabriel. I missed out on them, you know. Other people did them for me. You keep telling me what to do, okay? This is some woman, and I’m not any prize.”
Du Pré snorted.
“You are a kind man, Bart,” he said finally. “These days, that’s a prize. Any day.”
Bart walked off and conferred with the masons for a moment, and then he waved to Du Pré and headed off toward the barn. Booger Tom was working a young colt in the round corral.
Bart climbed up on the fence and talked to Booger Tom, who seemed to ignore him. Actually he was just watching the colt.
Bart came back, rubbing his hands hard. Both he and Du Pré got cramps from gripping handles all day, even though they took calcium tabs and ate a lot of cheese.
“I got this letter from Lucky,” Du Pré said, remembering. “He wants us to go on a canoe trip next June. Down one of the rivers that this Hydro-Quebec wants to dam, over on the east side of Hudson Bay. The river is called the Rivière de la Baleine.
“The River of the Whale,” said Bart softly.
“Yeah,” said Du Pré.
Bart looked over at him, waiting.
“I will go, I think,” said Du Pré. “I think I say no, Benetsee come and tell me to go.”
“We will go.”
Du Pré nodded.
Bart turned back to his house.
“What color should I paint the door?” he said.
“Red,” said Du Pré.
“Red?”
“So ask this Michelle Leuci.”
“Michelle …”said Bart, savoring the delicious syllables.
“Jesus,” said Du Pré, “I can’t take more of this. You say hi to her. You act like you been hit between the eyes with a poleaxe.”
“I have,” said Bart.’
“So has she,” said Du Pré.
“How so?”
“She is not coming here for the sights,” said Du Pré. “You bring her down to the Toussaint bar tonight. I will fiddle, get a few other peo
ple. You won’t have to talk so much.”
“Thanks,” said Bart.
Du Pré didn’t say anything more.
He went back to his car, trying not to laugh out loud.
CHAPTER 18
BART BROUGHT MICHELLE LEUCI down to the Toussaint bar about ten. It was good that they had found the bar. Since they were so lost in each other they kept tripping over chairs and knocking over glasses. Du Pré played the fiddle, someone played the piano, and a guitarist no one knew but who was damn good kept picking icy little bunches of notes in the background. Du Pré didn’t much like electric guitars or, for that matter, electricity, but this guy…
Madelaine laughed behind her hand at the lovers. She was very happy for Bart, whom she treated with the loving disdain big sisters bestow on their little brothers.
The evening was pleasant. No one got drunk.
Benetsee came in just a half hour before closing, shuffling along, bright black eyes flicking here and there like a smart old bird’s.
“Who is that?” said Michelle, leaning over to Du Pré and putting her hand on his.
“That is old Benetsee,” said Du Pré. “You remember you asked me about him when I talked to you in Washington?”
“He’s the seer, the medicine man,” she said. “I need to talk to him.”
“Buy him a jug of wine, he talk to you,” said Du Pré. The old goat talk to you in riddles and parts of sentences, stories don’t make any sense till doings happen to you. Let him drive you nuts for a while.
“Bart is going to work a little on the house in the morning,” said Detective Leuci, “and I have to talk to you for a while. I would like to talk to him, too.”
“Okay,” said Du Pré, “I will be at Madeline’s. I will get a jug of that bubble-gum wine he likes.”
“Will he be at Madelaine’s?”
“He will probably sleep in the garden shed like usually,” said Du Pré. “If he doesn’t, I know where he lives.”
If he ain’t either place, ask the fucking coyotes.
Du Pré bought a big jug of cheap wine to go.
Bart and Michelle went off into the night. Pretty soon, Du Pré and Madelaine left, too. Benetsee hadn’t said anything to them, he just stood at the back wall, glass in hand, nodding his head to the music, or, when the music stopped, just nodding his head.