Washika (28 page)

“Hold her steady, Ray!”

“Raise her some there, Pete. Jesus, them's pretty furrows!”

And while the tractors worked and the drivers strained their necks back and worked the lever and adjusted the height of their plows, a white-haired gentleman walked among the allotted squares, clipboard in hand. He sighted along the rows and jotted down notes, not once speaking to the drivers or the neighbours and friends at the ends of the furrows.

A short, stocky man wearing new overalls and a checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled just so was moving forward with the blades of his plow digging into the black earth. The tractor moved slowly but steadily and the man kept his left hand on the wheel and his right on the fender. His eyes scanned the furrows constantly and, as he worked, the small wooden toothpick wiggled steadily at the corner of his mouth.

“That's
Monsieur
Lafond,” Henri pointed to the red tractor going by.

“Yeah?” Lavigne said.

“Yeah. You should see the tools he has. He fixed up our house a few summers ago.”

The judge approached the square as
Monsieur
Lafond was finishing up. He walked back and forth, knelt on one knee. He jotted down more notes. He took out a measuring tape from his hip pocket and checked the width of the furrow.

Henri waved to
Monsieur
Lafond. “
Salut Monsieur Lafond
!” he yelled.

The man waved to Henri and smiled, and held the toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

“See?” Henri said.

“Yeah, okay,” Lavigne said. “Hey, let's go see the bulls.”

“I want to see who wins,” Henri stated, flatly.

“Ah, come on. We can find out later.”

“Yeah,” Morrow added. “Anyway, the results will be in the paper.”

Henri looked at the small gathering of people and the freshly plowed squares of black soil with the long, narrow furrows, damp and shiny. There were not many spectators for the County Fair Plowing Contest, about as many spectators as contestants. Henri felt bad about leaving. He had learned so much from
Monsieur
Lafond. And the man had been so kind to him.

The boys left then, heading back towards the circus tents, while the people strolled back and forth all along the thoroughfare. There the soundscape consisted of barkers, and merry-go-round music, screaming young voices, and the tic-tic-ticking of the wheels of fortune.

T
he cattle barn was a long, whitewashed building at the north end of the circus thoroughfare. They could feel the warmth as they entered. Once their eyes adjusted to the dim light they could see the brighter light outside through the open doorway at the far end of the building. Lavigne strutted ahead of the others, shuffling his feet in the thick layer of wood shavings He liked the smell of the shavings and the sounds the cattle made, chewing constantly and eyeing them intently as they went by each stall. There were Hereford, Holstein, Simmental and Charolais bulls, some with horns and others with their horns burned short. Some of the bulls had stainless steel rings through their noses with short lengths of chain attached to discourage them from jumping fences when their neighbours' cows were feeling in a loving way.

Henri went closer to one of the stalls. He held his hand up between the rails and the enormous nose approached, its large round nostrils, pink and moist and vibrating with each curious sniff. Suddenly, the long, thick tongue slid along his hand. Henri pulled back. The animal stared at him, eye to eye, swaying its head sideways and shifting its weight from left to right. It looked at Henri, long and steadily, and Henri looked back into its large, dark eyes and, for the first time in his life, he did not feel the fear or anxiety that he had so often felt during similar encounters with members of his own species.

Outside, at the other end of the cattle barn, was a long row of wooden stalls with slanted, shingle-covered roofs. In each stall, the earth was covered with a thick layer of shavings. The guys walked along the row of stalls, sticking their heads in and, as they did so, each animal backed into a corner of its stall.

“Hey you guys!” Lavigne called.

The boys turned. For a second, they saw Lavigne leaning over the door of one of the stalls. And then, he was gone.

“
Sacrament
!” they heard him scream.

The guys ran towards the stall. As they ran past the stall fronts, the sheep and goats pranced nervously to and fro. Just as they reached the stall door where Lavigne was last seen, he stood up, leaning his body outward over the stall door. There were shavings in his hair, and on the right knee of his blue jeans was a dark brown stain. In a corner of the stall, a billy goat stood stiffly with his head down and his beautifully curved horns lowered.

“Come on, Gaston,” St-Jean said. “Let's go have a beer before that fellow gets ideas. You never know, with that smell on you.”

Lavigne turned and stared at the goat. It was standing in the corner ready for the attack. Lavigne moved quickly, forward and down, and he reached out with his left hand, making a grab for the goat's beard. But he wasn't quite swift enough. He missed the beard by inches. The goat charged. Lavigne turned and lunged towards the open upper-half of the stall door. With his hands on the edge of the lower door, he heaved upwards and let his head and trunk roll downwards to the ground below. There was a crash of horn against boards as Lavigne's legs came up and over the stall door. Lavigne was safe. Inside, the goat charged the walls angrily as the guys looked in at him.

“Okay,” Lavigne said, shaking the shavings from his hair. “Now, let's go for a beer.”

They walked together, into the cattle barn and down the alleyway between the stalls of prize bulls. Once outside the boys cut across the freshly mowed field to the dusty road and the parked cars behind the long canvas tent. There were men standing around the cars drinking beer. Some were standing with their backs to the grounds, their legs spread apart, and urinating upon the ground as they stared up at the blue cloudless sky.

Henri left the guys when they came out of the cattle barn. He walked on the stubble of freshly cut hay, past the corral where young boys and girls paraded the calves for coloured ribbon prizes.

H
enri entered the building where they showed the chickens and rabbits. There were shavings on the floor, like at the cattle barn, but the smells were different. The hens and the large white roosters cackled incessantly. And there were rabbits, white ones with pink eyes and long slender ears and pink noses wriggling and sniffing the air around them. Henri poked his finger through the mesh and stroked the back of a fat grey rabbit.

“Careful you don't lose a finger,” a voice said.

Henri looked over his shoulder. The young girl was standing so close behind him their faces almost touched.

“
Allo
Sylvie,” Henri said. “I didn't know you liked chickens. Or is it rabbits?”

“I like all of them,” the girl said. She looked around the freshly painted building. “But I don't like to see them like that, in those little cages.”

“Yeah, that's how I feel too.”

Sylvie looked out through the tall rectangular windows that lined the south side of the building. Henri picked up a carrot top from beneath one of the cages and he tickled the rabbit's nose with the leaves. Sylvie looked back at Henri.

“Don't!” she said.

“I'm not hurting him.”

“How do you know? How would you like to be teased like that?”

Seeing something in front of you, so close, and never having it; Henri looked at the girl. For a second, perhaps it was longer than that, they looked into each other's eyes, and Henri wanted to tell her all about the ‘haves' and the ‘have-nots' and what it was like always reaching, always searching, and never quite getting there. How, just as you thought that you had found it, and were taking the last step towards acquiring it, something would happen and all of it would disappear and the reaching and the searching would start all over again. But, just the telling of it was destructive, he knew that. Even the dreaming of it, seeing it only days ahead, could cause that thing you wanted so desperately to leave you disappointed, once again.

“No, I wouldn't like that,” Henri squeezed the carrot top into the cage. The plump, grey rabbit hopped closer to Henri and began to nibble at the green leaves. They watched the rabbit taking small mouthfuls and chewing rapidly for what seemed to be a long time for such small morsels.

“Have you been here long, at the fairgrounds, I mean?”

“An hour maybe.”

“How did you come?”

“Lavigne. He has his father's car. You?”

“My parents. Did you get my message at the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

The girl stood before him with her eyes lowered. She stood close to him and Henri stared at her smooth-fitting jeans and the narrow plaits of her blouse rising upwards, and he remembered the white lobes. Suddenly, she was looking at him and he saw that her eyes were blue-green and that she did not lower her eyelids when he looked back into them. He did not know what to think. Before, he had wanted to speak to her about the ‘haves' and the ‘have-nots' but now he did not know what to think, what to say.

“I was drunk,” he said finally. “I wanted to call you from La Tanière but I was so drunk.”

“Why do you guys always do that?”

She liked Henri. She liked him the first time he stepped into the restaurant. She liked the shy way he sat alone at the counter, waiting for a chance to speak to her. She loved the way he blushed when she caught him looking down the front of her blouse. Even now, she loved him for not making excuses. He was drunk. That was plain enough. At least he did not go on about how he ran into his friends and was more or less obligated to get drunk with them. No reasons, no excuses, just drunk. He wanted to call her but he was too drunk. There was that, at least. Drunk as he was, he had shown some form of respect for Sylvie by not calling her. She was beautiful, attractive anyway. She was not blind. She had looked at herself in the mirror. And besides, there were always guys wanting to take her out. But, it was always the same: first politeness, and then drunkenness, and her complaining and then, their leaving. She liked Henri. Perhaps, she might even grow to love him.

“Anyway,” she said, turning to look out through the windows. “Now you're here.”

Henri looked at the back of her head, and the wavy strands of blond hair and how they ended in an oval between her shoulder blades. He looked over her shoulder, past the windows. Even from inside the building, they could hear the circus sounds, and Henri listened to the shrill cries as the red tub whirled on its tiny metal wheels, around and around, sucking the air out of its passengers, and he watched the coloured seats of the Ferris wheel disappearing past the windows of the rabbit and chicken building.

“Yes,” Henri said.

“Yes, what?” she turned to look at him.

“Yes, I'm here,” Henri smiled. “Yes, I'm here and you're here and, now, we're both here.”

The girl laughed. “You're crazy.”

“Yes,” Henri answered quickly. And, silently in his mind he repeated, yes, I'm crazy. Crazy for getting drunk and missing you last night, crazy for thinking of all those stupid schemes, and crazy for not having the courage to be honest and straight with you.

“Hey,” Henri said. “Want to go on the big wheel?”

“Oh, I'm so afraid of that.”

The girl looked out the window, at the wheel turning and carrying its red and green seats up and past the upper portions of the windows. The seats swayed as they went past the windows.

“Me too,” Henri said. “Maybe together it wouldn't be so bad, eh?”

Sylvie shrugged her shoulders and tightened the muscles of her neck and face as if that would display her genuine fear of the wheel. Henri watched her lips part, revealing two rows of even, white teeth.

“Come on,” Henri coaxed. Without thinking, he held out his hand and she, also not thinking about it, grasped his hand warmly. It was not until they were outside the chicken house, running towards the ticket booth, that they became aware of their sudden closeness.

“Hang on a minute,” Henri said. He let go of her hand and reached into his pocket. He still had some money left from the night before, and he thanked his father for that. He took some cash out of his pocket and joined the line at the ticket booth.

He tried not looking at her but that, he was not able to do. Sylvie stood there with her arms folded beneath her breasts, staring up at the wheel and listening to the cries of the riders as they came over and down. Just standing there, she was so beautiful. But then, so was Lise, walking towards him in the dim light of the room with her eyes looking straight at him and her long flowing hair just covering her breasts and the brownness of them showing through. And when her fingers had played at the back of his neck he had grown more excited than he ever thought he could be. But all through the time he had been with Lise in the back room of the infirmary, he had never felt the warmness or the closeness he had just experienced when Sylvie had placed her hand in his back at the chicken and rabbit house. Was he making it all up? Henri looked at the mole on the neck of the woman in front of him. She was fat and her hair, the colour of iodine, fell in uneven strands on the back of her neck. And there were two folds of skin on her neck, and then, the mole. The woman glanced back and smiled at a tall, thin man standing behind Sylvie. The man smiled, weakly, and Henri, looking at the side of the woman's face, saw a space where a tooth was missing and the one beside the space was browning with decay. But he saw a look between them. There was something there. Or, was he making it all up? Was he? Sylvie was beautiful. She was beautiful and scared and she was going to ride the Ferris wheel with him. Just to be with him? Was she really that frightened? The thin man behind her looked frightened. Henri was frightened. He had been up once on the big wheel and he remembered the coming over and down and the chair swaying. Going over he had prayed like he had once prayed in the back room of the infirmary: oh please God, make it good and let there not be an accident and make me look a fool. He remembered going backwards, up and up, that had not been so bad but, when they had gone over the crest and started downwards, he had closed his eyes. He felt his legs rise as the chair tilted upwards, and the hamburger and candy floss and orange drink had risen in his stomach, threatening to come rushing out. That had been with Lavigne and St-Jean the year before.