Washika

by Robert A. Poirier

  Everyone passing the cabin door looked up at André. Everybody looked the same to him. No one wore that look of guilt André was searching for. Alphonse looked up at him as he came out of the cabin.

  “Have a good snooze?” he said.

  “Just wait, sacrament!” André stood up in the lifeboat.

  “Another bad dream?” Alphonse laughed. “That’s what you get, sleeping in the sun like that.”

  André looked away. He could hear Alphonse laughing as he stepped off the tugboat. He could hear them all laughing.

  He sat down on the wood seat of the lifeboat. Although his socks had dried—he had hung them from the gunwales of the tiny lifeboat—his boots were still wet inside. He put them on but did not lace them up. He looked for his jacket and gloves. They were not in the lifeboat. He looked to stern, to the drive boats where he had left his lunch pail. There, at the stern stood a solitary figure. André looked at the blond hair sticking out from the ridge of the hard hat and, immediately, he knew. He knew exactly what had taken place and, as quickly, reacted in the only way he knew.

  Alphonse and the others heard the screaming as they reached the crest of the hill on the path to the camp. Beyond the knoll of fine sand and sparse tufts of short grass, they could just see the roof of the Madeleine’s cabin and her tiny lifeboat. There, in the lifeboat on the cabin roof stood short, skinny André Guy waving his fist at the open water of the bay and screaming, “Gauthier! Gauthier, mon tabarnacle!”

  Chapter 6

  Henri removed his wet wool socks. He slid out of the damp jeans and underwear and replaced these with dry ones from his duffle bag by the bunk. He hung the wet clothes from a wire stretched across the room. After he had stored his hat and work gloves, he got a towel and comb from the orange crate shelves between the two bunks and left the bunkhouse-and-office.

  At the main sleep camp Henri stood at the galvanized washbasin with the others. They were eight at a time at the basin. Henri was at the end and he could see everyone’s grey, soapy water as it floated by him, circled and finally disappeared down the screened hole. He washed his hands and face and wet his hair to comb out the stiffness that came from wearing a hard hat all day.

  He did not waste any time. Stopping only long enough at the bunkhouse-and-office to drop off his towel, Henri ran to the van. There he stood in line with the others and, when his turn came, he bought tobacco and papers, two chocolate bars, two soft drinks and a pair of bootlaces. He signed his name in the book and returned to the bunkhouse-and-office. He stored his things under the bunk, checked his hair in the broken piece of mirror on the wall and then left the bunkhouse-and-office. He was off for a visit with Mademoiselle Archambault.

  Henri walked on the fine sand between the cookhouse and the bunkhouse-and-office. The windows of the cookhouse were open and he could smell the freshly baked bread and hear Dumas, the cook, barking orders at the cookee. Just beyond the cookhouse, he stopped at the truck scales to say hello to Emmett Cronier. The door to the small hut was open. Emmett sat on a low stool, sharpening his pencil with a penknife. He was wearing an athletic undershirt, the kind with no arms. Tilted back on his head was the straw hat with a blue feather stuck in the headband, the kind of hat that Henri had seen people win by swinging a heavy mallet and ringing a bell at the top of a high column. He had seen it at the annual farmers’ fair in St-Émillion, a village northeast of Ste-Émilie.

  “Hot one, eh?” Henri greeted the man.

  “Yes, by Christ, you can say that again.”

  “Wonder if the nurse’s open?”

  “Always open. Christ though, you can never tell with all them curtains.”

  Henri opened his shirt and looked down at his chest.

  “Not bad, eh?”

  “Christ Almighty!”

  Henri buttoned the lower half of the shirt but left all of it loose, outside his trousers. He walked across the heavy wood planks of the truck scales and on to the gravel road towards the infirmary. He kicked at the larger stones as he walked along the road.

  Reaching the infirmary, he left the road and followed the sandy path to the verandah. The floor of the verandah had been painted grey, like the Madeleine. The screen door banged against the jamb when he knocked.

  “Yes?” a voice called from inside.

  “Hello,” Henri answered.

  “Yes? What is it?” the same voice replied.

  Henri cupped his hands around his eyes and his nose pressed against the screen trying to see inside. There, a short, stout woman stood before him. She was wiping her hands with a towel.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Henri opened the door and went inside. It was dark and cool in the room. There was a strong breeze coming in off the lake, whistling through the screens and making the long white curtains stand out away from the open windows beside each bed. He looked at the woman standing before him, at her spotless uniform, white like the curtains. She was staring at his boots.

  “Just stand right there,” she said.

  There was a smell of strong soap as she came closer. There was another smell but Henri was not certain what it was.

  “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Henri unbuttoned the lower portion of his shirt and as he held the shirt open he looked down at his boots. The sand that had collected around the soles of his boots had begun to dry and there was a scattering of it on the small square of orange carpet where he stood.

  “Hold it open so I can have a look.”

  Mademoiselle Archambault scanned his chest with her little green eyes while Henri studied her face and the way her hair was combed back from her forehead, dark brown and shiny and twisted into a ball at the back of her head. She had slender ankles and her legs were not very big up to her knees but, from the hem of her uniform, they seemed to grow larger. He liked the sound her uniform made when she moved, and how smooth it was and how the plaits were long and straight and running parallel to each other.

  “Painful, isn’t it?”

  “A little, yes.”

  He looked at her eyes as she spoke to him. He had not noticed before. Perhaps it was because she was looking at his chest. Or, perhaps, it was because he was trying to imagine the shape of her breasts. But now, he could see it plainly as she looked into his eyes. He had seen it at a funeral once, in the faces of the people standing in the pews and watching the coffin being wheeled out, followed by the grief-stricken relatives who had sat at the front of the church. He had seen it one hot afternoon by a roadside when a crowd of grown-ups stood around looking at a little girl crying and hugging and caressing a long-haired collie that had just been run over by a truck.

  “There is not much I can do.”

  “It seems to be getting worse.”

  “That is a very bad burn. I can apply a salve. That will ease the stinging a little.”

  She left him and went into the back room. Henri looked around the clean white room, at the six empty beds with their white sheets stretched tightly across the mattresses, the white metal bed stands with their little wooden wheels and the thin black trim around the white bedpans placed under each bed. The floor had been covered with tightly fitted sheets of varnished Masonite and so highly polished that he could see the reflections of the beds on it.

  Mademoiselle Archambault came in carrying a purple glass jar with a wooden tongue depressor sticking out from the top.

  “What is your name?”

  “Henri. Henri Morin.”

  “Hold your shirt out, Henri.”

  With the wooden instrument she brought out globs of pale yellow salve and applied it to his chest, starting at the top just below his neck and sliding it all the way down to his navel. She used long gentle strokes and Henri could feel the coolness of the salve each time she applied a new glob of it. He was beginning to feel better and he wanted to tell her that, and that he even liked the smell of the salve. He wanted to say that, although he liked the smell of the salve, there was another smell that he liked even better, and that
he liked the soft way she touched him and that he didn’t care if she was older than him.

  “There, that should do it.”

  “It feels better already.”

  “Try to sleep on your back. And, of course, stay out of the sun.”

  “Should I come back?”

  “See how it is in the morning. Probably it will blister. So do not pick at them.”

  “That’s it then?”

  “Yes.”

  Henri had not felt this way before. It was simple enough. All he had to do was to thank her and leave. He carefully buttoned his shirt, leaving the ends loose outside his trousers. He looked at the nurse, at the way her eyes were a light green and how quickly they darted from side to side when she looked at him.

  “Was there anything else?”

  “No, that’s all. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Henri.”

  There, it was done. Now all he had to do was to leave.

  “Mademoiselle Archambault?”

  “Yes, Henri?”

  “I’d like to know. What is your first name?”

  “Lise.”

  “Mine is Henri.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well, thank you again.”

  “You are welcome.”

  “You want me to shake the mat outside? My boots, you know.”

  “No, do not bother. I will do it later.”

  “All right. Well then, good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Henri.”

  “Hey! You like raspberries?”

  “Yes Henri, I like raspberries. Now go, you hear!”

  Lise Archambault, twenty-eight years of age, an excellent nurse, systematic and tidy about everything in her life, a lonely woman who had not made many friends since the dispersal of her graduating class, laughed for the first time in the three long years she had been at Washika.

  Henri opened the door to leave.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “You’ll see. As soon as they’re out, I’ll bring you a pailful.”

  As Henri walked down the gravel road away from the infirmary, Lise Archambault watched him for a long time through the screen door and, after, through the curtained window of her bedroom.

  Chapter 7

  At four o’clock in the morning it was raining and cold. It had been raining softly but steadily since midnight.

  P’tit-Gus walked quickly across the yard. He wore a heavy wool mackinaw with the collar turned up so that, at times, it touched the rim of his hard hat. He was a short, stocky little man and there was a no-nonsense look about him as he made his way from the main camp to the bunkhouse-and-office. With his hand in his pocket, he carried a bundle of newsprint wedged under his arm. Walking along the wet sand and lighting his way with a hunting lamp, he could see his breath in the cold air and the fine drops of rain falling in front of the lens.

  Arriving at the bunkhouse-and-office where six of the students slept, P’tit-Gus scraped his boots on the short length of square timber at the door. He cupped his hand over the latch of the screen door as he opened it and went inside.

  The air in the room was damp. It smelled of tobacco smoke, and fly oil and wet woolen socks. One of the students was snoring.

  P’tit-Gus moved swiftly to the north side of the room where the oil space heater was. It was an older model, a brown, rectangular, upright metal box with a grilled front and a small fuel tank at the back. From the top of the heater, a grey galvanized pipe rose to within two feet of the ceiling, turned sharply, and ran the full length of the room before entering the south wall. Grey metal chairs were scattered around the space heater with wet jeans draped over the backs and, directly over the heater and suspended from a wire hung several pairs of woolen socks of all colours, but most were the grey ones sold at the van, with red and white bars at the tops.

  P’tit-Gus reached around to the back of the heater and turned the flow valve to “half.” He opened the grilled door and then, very quickly, he opened the small round door of the firebox. The hinges were rusted and P’tit-Gus knew the noise they would make if he opened the door slowly. In the twenty odd years he had worked as chore boy in dozens of lumber camps, he had learned about such things.

  P’tit-Gus aimed the light down inside the firebox. He could see the velvety coat of blackness along its wall. At the bottom, the ashes were a dull grey except at the back where the oil had begun to flow and reflect the light of his lamp. He was very careful about things like that. He remembered well that cold February night in another camp when he had come so close to burning his shack to the ground. It was a good old heater, very much like this one but, for some reason that he never understood, the fire had gone out while he had been off attending to his chores. It was twenty below that night and, even though he had a good down-filled bag to sleep in, he knew what it would be like in the morning if he did not light a fire, and how miserable it would be shivering into his clothes. He crumpled up some paper, set a flame to it and dropped it into the firebox. Instantly, the flames went shooting past the door of the firebox and up into the pipe. For three hours that night P’tit-Gus sat by the stove, listening to the roar of the flames and the cracking of the stove and its pipes as the metal expanded, and he held the damper open with a hunting knife to try to keep the flames down. He sat in the dark in his shack as the light generator had long been shut down. He could smell the heat of the old stove and see the cherry-red circle of heat growing on the wall of the firebox.

  P’tit-Gus learned his lessons well. He remembered, yet there were always the reminders. There was the memory of the grey-white circle on the belly of the old stove to warn him about the lighting of fireboxes half-filled with fuel. There was the stump of an index finger on his right hand. That was from when he was a young boy and had not yet learned to sharpen a scythe without slicing off part of his hand. There was his short, stocky body to remind him of his poor old mother and her constant nagging when he began to use tobacco at the age of fourteen. Then, there were reminders that no one could see. There was one reminder that not even P’tit-Gus could see, but he knew about it and he never talked about it and, always, he tried not to think about it.

  Her name was Claudine and it was a long, long time ago. He was a young man then, full of joy and hope. He was working the lumber camps but he was still able to return to Ste-Émilie every other weekend. During one of these weekends, he met Claudine at a dance at the church hall. He walked her home after the dance that night and it was decided then and there that they were meant for each other. P’tit-Gus was in love and his days could not pass swiftly enough. He worked extra hours to help pass the time, to bring the time closer to when he could be with his Claudine.

  With the extra hours he worked, P’tit-Gus was able to place a down payment on a small but clean two-bedroom house, just below the rapids on the Gens-de-Terre River, where it entered the town of Ste-Émilie. On the weekends when he was in town, P’tit-Gus and Claudine worked in their new house: linoleum on the kitchen floor, curtains for the windows, and boiled linseed oil on the small area of hardwood flooring in the living room. They were to be married in June. Claudine worked as a secretary for an automobile dealer in town. Two car salesmen worked there. One of the salesmen was happily married while the other was known to have ruined more than half a dozen lives. He was a handsome man, and charming, so much so that his very own mother referred to him as a snake in the grass.

  One weekend when P’tit-Gus was in the camp, Claudine worked alone in their little house. She was preparing bed sheets for the new mattress they had purchased. She heard the door open and before she could rise from over the bed the handsome young man from the automobile centre was standing in the bedroom doorway. Claudine had never been with a man before. She and P’tit-Gus had decided to wait until Father Landry had blessed their marriage. The man entered the room. He held Claudine in his arms and before she knew it, this snake in the grass was lying on the bed beside her. He was gentle for such a big man. He caressed her softly and kissed her and, slowly,
removed her clothes. Then, he was inside her. Her heart screamed, no! Yet her body squirmed and convulsed to his every touch and finally exploded in waves of pleasure that never seemed to end. And then he left, without a word, not even a kiss. Claudine removed the blood-stained sheet from the mattress and threw it into the wood stove. Later that afternoon, she sat in the hotel lobby waiting for the bus. There was a sweater draped over her tiny suitcase and in her hand she held a one-way ticket for the Capital.

  One week later, P’tit-Gus was surprised to see that Claudine was not at her work place when he dropped by, as he did every time he returned from the camp. He rushed down the street to their little house by the river. There he found her letter on the kitchen table. He opened the envelope and, trembling, read how she had been unable to wait for him, how her craving had led her to take on another man, in their house and on their bed. What she had not written was that she had been attracted to the handsome salesman for quite some time. The weeks without seeing each other, while P’tit-Gus was working in the bush, only served to increase her desire for this handsome young man. She was ashamed, she wrote. She would never forgive herself. There was nothing to be done. She was leaving Ste-Émilie and he would never see her again.

  P’tit-Gus threw her letter into the cold, iron stove. As he did so, he saw the crumpled bed sheet and the blood stains, a rusty shade of brown. He returned to work on Monday morning and never mentioned the woman’s name again, not once in the thirty years since those events had taken place.

  P’tit-Gus flipped open his Zippo, lit the paper ball and, when he could no longer hold it without burning his fingers, dropped it into the firebox. The ball moved slightly, folding and unfolding. As it became a mass of black weightless petals, the last of its flame began to creep towards the back of the firebox and then around, until the remains of the ball were surrounded, first yellow, then yellow-red. He watched until the flames came like long, red tongues from the whole circumference of the firebox, darting higher and higher until they touched just above where the paper had been. He watched for the quick bursts of the shorter tongues, deep purple and darting out between the longer ones.