Washika

by Robert A. Poirier

  Henri smiled to himself as he looked at the stack of mattresses and packsacks and sleeping log drivers piled haphazardly about the deck. Just imagine, he thought, how the poor old boys at Cabonga will react when they get sight of this. It did not make sense to Henri. And he tried to understand, going over all that Alphonse had told him; Cabonga Dam on the Cabonga Reservoir where they had worked all that summer, the gap being opened in the dam, and the logs being driven through the gap and down the Gens-de-Terre river, and the men who had drowned there on previous log drives and where you could still find crosses erected along its banks. He closed his eyes, thinking, and he could feel the sun heating his eyelids and his face was warm and his head fell back heavily and, soon, Henri was snoring loudly like Lavigne who lay next to him, and St-Jean at his feet.

  Chapter 53

  When Henri opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that the Madeleine’s engine was not running. But, there was another engine running close by.

  “Lunch!” Alphonse called from the cabin. Almost immediately, the other engine shut down. It was the Hirondelle, a tugboat almost identical to the Madeleine.

  Henri squinted against the noonday sun and his mouth was dry from sleep. He stretched and then he did up his bootlaces. After, he began the search for his lunch pail like everyone else. He suddenly remembered that he had left his lunch pail in the cabin so that it would be out of the sun. Alphonse stood in the doorway with a sandwich in one hand and, in the other, a cup of steaming hot tea.

  “Excuse me, Alphonse,” Henri said as he slid by the man. “I just want to get my lunch.”

  “You can eat here, Henri. You might be better in the shade.”

  Henri remembered a similar warning, several weeks past, and the fish-scale V formation on his chest, and the purple jar, and Lise Archambault sliding the wooden tongue depressor with its yellow glob of salve slowly, and delicately, down his chest.

  “Yes, all right,” Henri said. He moved the wooden box away from the doorway and sat down. It was cool in the cabin and a light breeze whistled through a crack in the starboard window.

  Alphonse leaned back into the cabin and picked out another sandwich from his lunch pail. From where he sat on the wooden box, Henri could see Télesphore Aumont standing in the doorway of the Hirondelle. The two tugboats had been made fast with their gunwales touching.

  “Well, you know how they are,” Alphonse spoke as he poured tea from his thermos bottle. “You’ve been here as long as me, Téles. You must know by now how they think.”

  “Ah yes, that’s true.” the man said. “You’re certainly right about that.”

  Henri looked beyond the space between Alphonse and the cabin doorway. He could see Télesphore framed in the red trim of the Hirondelle’s cabin doorway. He was wearing his black sunglasses as he always did whenever he went outside, and a white hard hat. He had never achieved the rank of foreman and he had no one working under him, but no one ever mentioned the hat. There was nothing unusual about Télesphore, except his ears. They were large, elephantine ears. In the bunkhouse-and-office, the boys had made a joke about them. In the morning, when Télesphore coughed his way to the bathroom, the boys no longer waited to see his eyes come popping out of his head since, as the joke went, he was not really going to the bathroom at all. In fact, Télesphore Aumont was taxiing up the runway, testing the air and revving his engine and preparing to take off with his large flaps angled just perfect for a perfect takeoff.

  “Now take this gang here,” Alphonse continued, chewing as he spoke and washing the sandwich down with hot tea. “You think they need them at the gap? Armand has been doing the job, almost alone, for more than thirty years.”

  “Yes, you’re right there,” Télesphore burped loudly. He threw a corner of the thick sandwich into the water. “So you think it’s the gang below?”

  “No doubt at all,” Alphonse said. “Besides, and keep this for yourself, Simard-Comtois told me so himself just this morning.” Alphonse looked over his shoulder at Henri. “This is between us, okay Henri?”

  “Yes, of course,” Henri replied.

  “According to him,” Alphonse continued, “they made a bit of a gaffe in Ste-Émilie, at the head office. We don’t know who, but that doesn’t matter. It seems that there was supposed to be only six fellows on the sweep this year. But, you know how it is, the son of one, and the friend of the son of another. So now, there are twenty students on the sweep plus one working as a cookee. But, at the head office in Ste-Émilie, there are still only six.”

  “Et bien,” Télesphore sighed, as he pulled at one of his large, flat ears. “That complicates things, eh? It’s a wonder they haven’t discovered this already down below.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that. It seems that the clerk here can fix it so nothing shows in Ste-Émilie. Simard-Comtois told me. But, the worst is that some big shot is coming to Washika this week. Some kind of directeur, very high placed in the Company. Imagine, just for a minute, what he would think when he sees my gang here. And there’s supposed to be only six of them.”

  “Et bien,” Télesphore pulled at his ear again. “So that’s why were going to Cabonga.”

  “Not you, Téles,” Alphonse brought a toothpick out from his shirt pocket and placed it in a corner of his mouth. “They might need the Hirondelle for a while. Maybe even the Madeleine. We’ve got to keep the booms and all of those logs moving. It’s my gang they’re shipping down to Cabonga, to hide. No one knows for how long?”

  “So what will your gang do at Cabonga?”

  “They’ll help Armand at the gap. Maybe they’ll do a little sweep above the dam. Armand has an Acadia. Those are good little boats for that kind of work.”

  Télesphore rubbed the stubble on his cheek and on the end of his chin. “And there’s a Russel there as well,” he said. “Bernatchez is handling her. Poor Armand, he’ll find it hard with your gang. He’s so used to the quiet.”

  “Yes, I think so too.” Alphonse began to roll a cigarette. He sat down on the doorsill and leaned his back against the frame.

  “Et bien, what can we do, eh?” Télesphore stretched his bulging waistline, rubbing the palm of his hand affectionately across his rounded belly. He reached behind the cabin door and brought out a casting rod. “Well I guess I’ll try to scare up a few,” he said. Télesphore went forward then, to stand on deck next to the anchor, and cast out into deeper water.

  Chapter 54

  It was cool in the cabin, and very quiet. Henri sat on the low wooden box near the open doorway. He could hear the water slapping the hulls of the two tugboats. Behind and beyond the Madeleine, he could hear the barking of the gulls as the boys tossed cheese and bread crust out onto the water. Occasionally, someone moved about on deck, striking metal with lunch pail or hard hat, or dropping a pike pole across the seats of a drive boat. But, mostly, it was very quiet and Henri listened to the breeze as it entered the cabin. It was a special time of day for Henri. It was a moment of quiet contemplation, not unlike the time he had spent in church, at the Église de St-Germain, the year that he had gone to mass every morning during Lent. He had arrived thirty minutes early one morning and the experience of solitude, of silent meditation, had touched him deeply. Thereafter Henri had arrived early every morning, to sit alone, unmoving in the wooden pew, to stare at the statues and think about everything in his life and the things he understood and those he did not. He would drop to his knees and look up at the statues and concentrate very hard and will the carved heads to move and their lips to part in smile.

  “Alphonse,” Henri almost regretted breaking the silence. “Don’t you find it kind of special, this time of day, so quiet and peaceful.”

  “Et oui, Henri.” Alphonse replied. “A time to think of old sins. And maybe some new ones, eh Henri?”

  “But I like this time of day, you know. Here on the water like this.”

  “Yes, probably. I’ve been here a long time, Henri.”

  A strong breeze blew in through th
e open doorway, scattering the smoke as it rose from Alphonse’s cigarette. Henri listened to the quiet, the water slapping against the hulls, the barking of the gulls. Suddenly, there were voices, and hurried footsteps on deck.

  “Alphonse,” Lavigne stood in the doorway. “Could we take one of the drive boats? The guys spotted a bark canoe on shore.”

  “Yes, yes,” Alphonse stood up from the high stool at the wheel. “Go ahead, Gaston. But, make sure they put on their life jackets. You never know who might show up here.”

  “Yes. Of course, I’ll tell them,” Lavigne said as he stepped back from the doorway.

  Henri could still hear his footsteps on deck as he yelled to the others that it was okay to take the drive boats.

  “Have you ever seen that canoe, Alphonse?”

  “Oh yes. You’ve gone by there often. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it.

  “How’s that?”

  “Look outside, Henri. You don’t know where we are? It’s true, we worked a little further down. This is Lost Cabin Bay here, where we cleaned up just before going on the fire.”

  Henri stood up and looked out beyond the bow to the sloping shore with its yellow sand, and the jack pine, and the white birch trees leaning outward over the shoreline, and the low bushes just beneath, mostly sweet fern and blueberry. To Henri, the shore was not unlike the others they had worked on the Cabonga. He looked again, at the grey chicots sticking up out of the sand and, further in from shore, the isolated stands of black spruce. Looking past the stern of the Hirondelle, he saw the grey, dead remains of an enormous white pine standing taller than the forest around it.

  “That’s a white pine over there, Alphonse?” Henri wasn’t absolutely sure. “The big one, taller than the rest?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Alphonse replied without turning to look at it.

  “And so this is Lost Cabin Bay?”

  “Yes sir. Maybe you should have gone there with the others, Henri.”

  “To see the canoe?”

  “Yes. But there’s not much left. It’s very old. It was very well made though, and if it hadn’t lain on shore so long, probably it would still be in good shape. And then, there’s the cabin.”

  “There’s a cabin in there?”

  “Yes. Only the walls now. The roof fell in because of the snow, and now the floor has rotted. The walls are solid though.”

  “Was it the same person, you think, who built the cabin and the canoe?”

  “Oh yes. I met him one time in Ste-Émilie. A big man. George Opikwanic, a very strong man.”

  “An Indian?”

  “Yes. He used to trap around here in the winter. That was a long time ago. He would stay here all winter. Just him and Katherine, his wife, and a beaver dog.”

  Henri looked out again at the shore and the trees. He tried to imagine what it would look like in winter, with the sweet fern covered and the boughs of the pine heavy with snow. It was difficult to imagine the Cabonga frozen.

  “Did he travel in and out by dog team, Alphonse?”

  “No. They would spend the winter here. They came in from Washika by canoe in October or early November and they would come out only in spring, when the ice was off the lake.”

  Alphonse turned to look at Henri. He looked at Henri for what seemed to be a long time but he seemed to be elsewhere. Finally, he said, “you are not going to ask me about the canoe?”

  “The canoe? You already told me, Alphonse. It belonged to the trapper.”

  Alphonse smiled. “Think Henri,” he said. “The man’s cabin is abandoned, ruined, and his canoe as well.”

  “Yes?”

  “And the trapper’s not here.” Alphonse lowered his head, covering his eyes with the visor of his hard hat.

  “An accident. There was an accident with the canoe? Did they both drown?”

  “No, Henri. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  Alphonse slipped the pack of tobacco out of his shirt pocket and began to roll a cigarette. Henri noticed the change. Alphonse had suddenly become very serious.

  “You know what happened?”

  “Yes Henri, I know but I’m not proud of what happened. I can tell you that it’s been a great shame in my family ever since. Remember my brother, Oscar? I told you about him.”

  “The altar boy?”

  “Yes, that’s him. Well, he used to haul supplies for the Company. He had his own truck. He was doing very well. A good worker, Oscar, but he liked to take a drink and, when he was drunk, it was the women. Anyway, one day in October, George Opikwanic asked Oscar if he would take him as far as Washika. Oscar says sure, and they made arrangements to pick up George’s supplies at the store. There was only one general store in Ste-Émilie then. The morning they were to leave, George and Katherine and the beaver dog were sitting on the verandah of the store at seven o’clock. The stores opened early in those days. They had their packsacks, and boxes full of provisions, rifles and ammunition, and kerosene for the lamps.”

  “It was almost nine o’clock before Oscar arrived, loaded down with supplies for the camps. After they got all of George’s supplies in the truck, Oscar was sweating. It wasn’t the work so much but he had drunk quite a bit the night before. And he wasn’t too happy because it was Friday morning, which meant that he would be spending most of the weekend in the camps. So, after they finished loading, he says to George, “How about a little beer before we leave, eh?” Now, George was in a hurry to get out of Ste-Émilie, to be in the bush and trapping and away from the ways of the white man. And besides, it was the end of October and who could tell when the weather would change. But, Oscar was doing him and his wife a big favour. He was hauling supplies in to Washika that day and so he was not charging George for the trip. Anyway, George said okay, and they stopped in at Duhamel’s. You know the place?”

  “Yes, I know where you mean.” Henri had driven by the place many times with his parents on their way to Sunday mass at St-Exupéry’s. The verandah slanted downward towards the sidewalk and all of the second floor windows had the blinds down, yellow, faded blinds. There were always old men sitting on the verandah on Sunday mornings, warming their bodies in the sun. Henri remembered the barn-red paint of the building with its cream trim around the door and windows but, mostly, he remembered the sign hanging from the second floor balcony, a faded lime-green with red letters saying, “Chambre à Louer- $5.00” and the price crossed out with a single stroke and the new price to rent a room, $4.00, written in its place.

  Alphonse ran his tongue along the paper and rolled the cigarette between his fingers. He lit the cigarette, closing one eye to keep the smoke out.

  “Anyway,” Alphonse continued. “At noon, they were still at the hotel. George had fallen asleep, drunk, at the table and Oscar had taken a room upstairs with Katherine. It was almost three o’clock by the time they woke George, and the three of them headed for Washika. No one knows for sure what happened after that. Oscar says that they did not make any stops along the way but there were quite a few places then, on the way to Washika, where a man could buy a drink. It was late when they arrived and there are many who claim that Oscar fell out of the truck when he stopped at the storehouse at Washika. George and Katherine had to be held up by their arms going down to the dock. The men loaded the canoe for them and helped them in along with their beaver dog. That was the last time the trapper and his wife were ever seen alive.

  “It was near the end of May and they had not come out yet. We thought maybe they had gone to Cabonga Dam but Armand said that he had seen no one since the break-up. Finally, Jean-Luc Desrosiers went down that way for his inspection before the summer sweep. He stopped in at the cabin. The canoe was right where it is today, but in better shape. Inside the cabin, he found George hanging from a crossbeam, the rope so tight that the skin of his neck covered most of it. In the corner, with blankets up to her chin, his wife lay dead. They had both been dead for a long time, possibly since that last night they came down the Cabonga by canoe. There was a b
rief investigation. Two policemen arrived there in a Beaver airplane on floats. In the papers, later, we read that Katherine had been strangled to death.”

  “And after?” Henri inquired. “What happened after that? Was the dog ever found?”

  “No. There was no sign of the dog. Nothing happened really. When the investigation was completed they sent my brother Oscar off to the Capital where he began driving a truck for the Company. He never returned to Ste-Émilie after that. I have never seen him since…”

  Chapter 55

  The sun was high in the southwest when they arrived at Cabonga Dam. The Madeleine made her way in among the logs, followed by the Hirondelle. When Henri looked back, to stern, there were logs behind him for almost a quarter mile and, beyond the bow, they were jammed right up to the dam. In the bay, opening onto the dam, the pulpwood was packed tightly together among the larger logs. On the east side of the bay, a large grey island of broken rock sat above the water. On its westward side, hundreds of logs stood up out of the water, stranded there in a mound of entangled logs. Henri pointed to the logjam.

  “There’ll be plenty of those,” Alphonse smiled.