Washika (14 page)

Henri did not look up from his place as they went by the infirmary. He did not think about Lise Archambault and he did not worry about the fire and not going to Ste-Émilie for the weekend. He was tired. He dragged on his cigarette and felt sick to his stomach. He tried not to think about that. He tried not to think about anything at all.

They were only five miles out of Washika when it happened. As they reached the crest of a very steep hill, the darkness suddenly changed to the semi-darkness of dawn. They could make out the shores of the lakes and swamps and see clearly the jack pine silhouetted along the roadside and the shores of the lakes.

The driver shifted gears and began a long descent towards a bridge at the bottom, with swamp on both sides. Floating shrubs like tiny islands lined the shore between the water and the trees. As the bus headed down, Henri could feel the heaviness of his stomach rising up to his throat. It was difficult to swallow. He heard the snap of the window fasteners at the front of the bus and felt the cool air on his face as it rushed towards the back of the bus. Suddenly, someone yelled, “Ah no,
sacrament
!”

Henri looked from his seat to the front of the bus. François Gauthier was kneeling on the seat with his head sticking out of the open window. All of the windows from François down were splashed with a pink, creamy substance. Looking out through the window beside him, he could see the vomit sliding down on the glass.

CC Coulomb sat next to Henri and beside the window. He sat with his eyes closed and his mouth shut very tight and Henri could hear noises coming from his throat. The bus had just crossed the bridge when CC quickly snapped his hard hat off his head and held it in front of him like a soup bowl. Without retching more than once, the hat was filled almost to the brim.

I
t was after six when they arrived at Camp 15. There were men rushing down the long stairways of the sleep camps and heading towards the cookhouse. There were trucks arriving with men who had worked all night and other men on the verandahs of the sleep camps waiting to take their places. The bus stopped outside the camp office and the camp foreman they had seen the day before, with his grey curls and neatly pressed trousers and clean shirt, waved to them from the office verandah. They could not see his clean shirt and trousers under the black rubber raincoat but they knew they were there and they hated the man again.

Henri looked at the man and guessed that perhaps he had a son about their age and he wondered if his son hated him too.

“Yes sir!” Alphonse greeted the man as he stepped down from the bus. The foreman stayed on the verandah, out of the rain.

“Nice weather for ducks, eh,” the man replied. “Your boys in good shape today? Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The boys stared at the foreman from the windows of the bus and they hated him and they hated his white hard hat and his grey curls and his black rubber raincoat.

“Where to this morning, Georges?” Alphonse inquired.

So, that was his name. Georges. Now they had a name. That goddamn Georges! That goddamn Georges and his lousy goddamn curls and his goddamn clean clothes and his lousy son-of-a-bitch of a forest fire. There, they felt better now. It was like a cyst they had been pressing from all sides and now, finally, it had burst and the creamy, yellow pus had come shooting out. Afterwards, the red scar would heal over and the skin would be as if the cyst had never been there at all.

“Well, you see,” Georges said. There's been a little change in plans. The men finished up on one of the islands just this morning. There'll be some cleaning up to do in there. And patrolling, after. Maybe five, six days.”

“Oh, at the very least!” twenty voices called out from inside the bus.

The man looked up at the windows of the bus. “Well,” he said. “They're in good shape this morning, aren't they?”

“They'll be all right,” Alphonse said.

“It's the hours. It's not the work so much. It's the hours that get you.”

“They're a good bunch. Give them a few days.”

As the two men stood talking, the caboose arrived alongside the bus. The old man, Fred Garneau, was sitting up front with the driver. The fellows waved to the old man and he smiled back at them, showing his bare gums. The driver got out and went to join Alphonse and the camp foreman.

“You know Jacques here,” the foreman said.

“Yes, we met yesterday,” Alphonse nodded to the man.

“Jacques will take you out to the island. There'll be boats there so you can get across, and spare ones for loading the equipment. You can start patrolling as soon as that's done.”

“What about the old man?” Alphonse inquired. “Does he stay with us?”

“Do you mind?”

“No, not at all.”

“He can make tea and take care of the lunches and everything.”

“No, we don't mind,” Alphonse repeated. “In fact, the boys seem to like him. It might cheer them up.”

“He's a funny one,” the driver said. “And
sacrament
, you should hear him swear.”

The foreman stretched his arm forward and looked at his watch. Alphonse stared at the gold watch with its flexible metal wristband and, for a brief moment, he compared it to his own ordinary Westclox ticking loudly at the end of a leather thong in the slit pocket of his trousers. He felt a cut below Georges and his gold watch and his neatly groomed hair and expensive clothes, but only for a passing moment. He thought of that night, after midnight mass, how Francine and the children had sat around the tree. Not one of them would open their gifts until he, Alphonse Ouimet, father of the family, had opened the little square box wrapped in fine, soft paper with a red silk bow and held up the Westclox pocket watch for everyone to see. The look of pride in the eyes of his seven children was worth more than all the gold watches in the world. But there was another gift as well. Alphonse looked at his wife Francine. The children were far too busy tearing open their presents to have noticed. The look they shared that Christmas Eve, brief as it was, would remain with them for the rest of their lives.

“Good,” the foreman said. “That's settled then. I'll let you go now. If you need anything. Any problem. Don't hesitate. You can always get in touch with me through Jacques here.”

“Sure thing! No problem,” the driver snapped.

“Well, we'd better get going,” Alphonse said.

“Yes sir!” the driver snapped again. “No problem.”

Alphonse turned to say good-bye to the foreman but the man had left and Alphonse could hear him laughing loudly as he stepped into the dry, warm office.

T
he island was completely burned. All along the shore the charred stems of the bushes stuck out over the sand. Inland, there were black, standing tree trunks and the tangled remains of the ones that had fallen or had been cut down by the men with saws. Grey canvas hoses sat in the ashes on the forest floor and were spread out all over the island.

As the students stepped out of the boats they could hear the mosquitoes. It had stopped raining but it was hot and humid. There was no breeze and the only moving thing was the flat brown water of the river beside them.

“All right,” Alphonse said. “Now here's what we do.”

Alphonse picked up one end of a canvas hose from the ashes. He bent two feet of the hose along itself, turned it edgewise, and rolled it two more feet, on the ground this time.

“Now, you have to get the water out,” he said. “Squeeze it out as you go. It's not hard. Just roll one way and then the other. Keep it up until you reach the end. You disconnect the brass connector and then you make a little knot with what's left. That's the handle. Here, I'll show you.”

Alphonse followed the canvas hose through the ashes, over stumps, around trees and through charred bushes, rolling two feet at a time until he reached the place where the hose was joined to another by a brass connector. Alphonse disconnected the two hoses. He passed the loose end through the bundle he had formed. He gave the remaining piece of hose a sharp tug and swung the bundle over his shoulder.

“You see?” he said. “That's all. It's called a
banane
and you carry it like this. Okay? Here, Henri, you try one.”

Henri picked up the hose end that Alphonse had disconnected. The hose was stiff in his hands and left them covered in soot. It was flat in places, but where water remained inside it was round and difficult to bend.

“Go on, Henri,” Alphonse encouraged him. “Press hard. You have to get all the water out. That's the way. Press hard and get it out as you go. That makes nice tight
bananes
, and not so heavy to carry.”

The students stood in the burned-out section fighting off the mosquitoes and watching Henri roll his way along the length of hose in the ashes.

“All right,” Alphonse called to them. “You see how it works now. I want you to make
bananes
with all the hoses you can find. Bring them back here and put them in the boats.”

The group spread out across the island. They searched out the grey hoses and held the ends up to force the water down. Then they rolled them into
bananes
and carried them off to the boats as Alphonse had told them.

Alphonse and Fred Garneau had gone for a walk. As soon as Alphonse had finished telling the crew about rolling the canvas hoses into
bananes
, he and Fred each took a shovel from one of the boats and left, following the shoreline and examining the damage that had been done by the fire.

“A real goddamn shame,” Fred said.

“What's that?” Alphonse said. His eyes followed the slow current the Ottawa made around the island.

“All this mess, what good does it do, eh?”

“Good? I don't know. They say it grows blueberries. And jack pine.”

“
Calis
!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Alphonse laughed. “I don't know Fred. They say that God has put everything on this earth for a reason. But, the fires? I don't know. Makes jobs for fellows like us, I guess.”

“Maybe a cleanup, eh? Maybe that's His way of starting over again.”

Alphonse jabbed the shovel into the sand. He reached into his shirt pocket for his tobacco. He slid the thin package of papers out from the cellophane wrapper and began to roll a cigarette.

“Yes,” Alphonse answered. “I heard that once. I heard a man speaking about Hitler that way and how that was God's way of cutting back the population, of starting over. I couldn't believe it.”

“
Calis
!” the old man swore. His cheeks sucked inwards over his toothless gums and he spat on a grey log lying on the sand. Alphonse watched the yellow liquid sliding down off the log and onto the sand.

When Alphonse and the old man returned, the students were sitting in the boats that were tied to driftwood jutting out from the shore. A breeze had sprung up and tiny waves slapped against the boats. Two boats had their bows pulled up onto shore and were loaded to the gunwales with the grey-black
bananes
. A brown canvas bag in one of the boats contained the portable pump that Alphonse had asked Henri and Lavigne to pick up. In the end, it was much too cumbersome to carry the pump in its canvas bag so Maurice St-Jean, the strongest of the group, ran his arms through the straps and carried the pump out on his back the way it should be done. The job was done. At least, that part of it. Both Alphonse and the old man were surprised to see that they had done so much work in so short a time.

“It was the mosquitoes,” Lavigne explained. “It was hurry up or be eaten alive.”

Alphonse was pleased. They had done a good job. Now, they sat in the boats and rolled cigarettes and waited for the morning to pass.

At eleven o'clock a man arrived and, without stopping the motor of his boat or even coming ashore, he threw off a cardboard box and a tin pail. “Lunch!” he said. He smiled at the students and then, swiftly, turned the boat around, heading away from the island and leaving only small waves slapping against the shore.

The old man placed the box in the shade of the boats snubbed on shore.

“Here,” he said to François Gauthier. “Fill this up to about three quarters.”

Gauthier took the pail and, stepping on the seats, made his way to the stern of the boat furthest from shore. Closer to shore the water had been stirred up when the boys stepped in it.

Now the old man was in charge. It was Fred Garneau's time. Like Gauthier, each of the students carried out his orders and returned as soon as they had completed them.

“No, no,
sacrament
!” he swore. “That won't burn, not even in hell. Dead wood, you hear? But, not lying on the ground.
Calis
!”

They laughed as Fred pretended to be angry with them. Alphonse was pleased with his boys. He watched as they gathered piles of driftwood and held them up for the old man's approval before laying them by where the fire was to be.

“Atta boy! Now you're talking!” the old man yelled. “You'll learn. When you get to be my age, you'll see. You'll know then how to make fire. Ha, ha, ha!”

Fred lit the ball of dry grass covered with thin, dead spruce branches from the tree he had found along shore. They could hear the dry twigs snap as they burned. The old man added larger twigs and smaller pieces of driftwood until the flames touched the pail suspended over the fire. The students were quiet as Fred worked at his fire. It was his fire and his time. They watched the dried old hands placing each piece of wood just so, and how the flames did not seem to bother him.

“There,” he said at last, in a low satisfied voice. “Now you, Henri, get that box over there. We're not working for the devil. We can take time to eat, eh? Ha, ha, ha!”

There was bread and margarine and mustard along with slices of roast beef and bologna wrapped in wax paper. There were several cans of warm apple juice and a large bag of flat, thin biscuits. At the bottom of the box was a metal can full of black tea leaves.