Washika (29 page)

The wheel was just as big now and the cries were the same and he repeated: God, please, let me pull through this without looking a fool. He placed the five-dollar bill through the opening and the woman behind the barred window of the ticket booth looked up at him.

“Two please,” Henri smiled at the woman.

“One fifty,” the woman said without smiling. “Your change sir.”

Henri placed the change in his pocket and walked over to the fence. The fence covered a large area around the Ferris wheel with only two openings, one beyond and the other behind the ticket booth. Sylvie stood in line with others waiting their turn on the wheel. Henri joined the line and stood close to Sylvie.

“All set?” he said.

“Guess so,” the girl nodded.

All eyes were on the wheel. Henri focused on two young girls in a green chair with the number eighteen written in white numbers on the back. He watched it rising backwards, and the girls laughing and waving to three other young girls standing by the fence. And then, as they approached the midpoint, the chair swayed upwards, feet first, and he could no longer see the girls from where he stood, only the number eighteen written in white paint on the bottom of the chair. As the chair descended there was a chorus of screams from number eighteen and, as they rode by the boarding platform, the girls opened their eyes and began to laugh and wave again.

Henri glanced at Sylvie. They both smiled. It was a brief smile and then, their attention returned to the wheel. Suddenly, there was a change in the sound. The engine driving the Ferris wheel did not sound the same. The man operating the engine was deeply tanned. He had thick, curly black hair and his arms were covered in blue-green tattoos: mermaid, Maltese cross, serpent and torch, and a heart with the word “mom” inscribed inside it. The man stared up at the numbers on the chairs and held onto a long metal lever. He slowed the engine and a chair stopped at the boarding platform. The man quickly stepped onto the platform, released the holding bar and held the chair to keep it from swaying as a man and a woman got out.

Near the ticket booth a tall, skinny man, deeply tanned with a small gold earring in his left ear lobe, collected the tickets from the people waiting their turn on the wheel.

“Okay!” he said sharply. He dropped the small length of chain barring the opening in the fence. Two people, a man and his young daughter, went by him and onto the platform. The man and his daughter sat down in the chair and, immediately, the operator brought down the holding bar and locked it in place. He hopped off the platform and stood by the engine. He pulled on the lever and, as the engine gained speed, the young man and his daughter began to move backwards and up with the little girl hanging on to her father's arm.

Henri and Sylvie waited their turn, watching people getting off and new ones getting on. And then, it was their turn. The operator smiled at Sylvie as she stepped onto the ramp and, when they were seated and the holding bar was in place, the man gave the chair a shove before returning to his engine. The chair swayed in midair and Sylvie held Henri's arm tightly and Henri prayed again for bravery and a strong stomach and whatever else it would take. They ascended slowly, one chair at a time, as previous passengers got down and new ones arrived. Henri held on to the bar with one hand. He could feel the smoothness of many coats of paint on the bar.

“See?” Henri smiled. “It's really nothing.” They had reached the very top and there was only a slight breeze at that height. Henri could feel his knees begin to tremble but he fought it and pushed against the footrest with both feet.

“Look,” he said. “We can see all of the grounds from here. Look, down there, Sylvie. There's Lavigne's father's car.”

The girl peaked over the edge of the chair and quickly turned her head back towards Henri. The wheel began to move, downwards. It had moved slowly before, taking on new passengers. Now, they could feel it, the whole frame of the wheel vibrating with new speed and, down they came, their feet rising upwards in the footrest and their stomachs reaching out for air. Henri kept his mouth closed. He could feel Sylvie's grip tighten on his arm and, as they went by the loading ramp, he could hear the operator laughing, and then, backwards and up they went.

Henri could not think. He did not want to think. There was only one thing on his mind: dear God, dear, dear God, make it end soon and let me not be a fool and puke all over. And then, over they went again, and down, his stomach rising and the circus man's eyes smiling and him speeding up the engine and Sylvie's head buried on his arm. At last, the engine slowed. Sylvie lifted her head. Was it over? Not quite, but the worse was past. They were unloading. And Henri had made it without making a fool of himself. But he was not thinking about God now, or being a fool and vomiting all over everybody on the wheel. What next, he was thinking. What would they do now? Should they just walk around, stop and talk somewhere? Talk about what? Was he falling in love again? It was only a short ride on a Ferris wheel. She held onto his arm but only because she was frightened. Perhaps. Maybe she was in love with him. There, he was at it again. There he was, being a ‘have-not' again.

They moved backwards and upwards, slowly now, as passengers got down and left, going through the opening in the fence on one side of the ticket booth while others replaced them going by the tall man taking tickets on the opposite side. Sylvie suddenly let go of his arm and waved to someone on the ground,
Monsieur
and
Madame
Lanthier;
Madame
waved a pink sweater at her daughter while her husband scowled and held up his wrist and pointed towards it with jerking movements of his index finger.

“Your father,” Henri said, not looking at the man below. “What's wrong?”

“Oh nothing. He's just telling me it's time to go.”

Henri felt sick again. So, that was it. A ride on a Ferris wheel and then, good-bye. He might have known. He was a ‘have-not' and would always be a ‘have-not' and there was nothing better that a ‘have-not' could expect. When they reached the very top, Henri was feeling better. For a while there, I almost fell again, he thought, but no, I'm not ready for that yet. Sylvie is wonderful and beautiful and all I've ever dreamed of; someday, perhaps, but not now. No, I'm not ready yet.

Sylvie turned to look at Henri, who was peering over the edge of the chair.

“Henri,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Henri, I'll be leaving with my parents as soon as we get off.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Henri, could I write to you at Washika?”

Henri's mind began to race: pencil, paper, not much time, wheel turning, parents waiting by the fence.
‘
Have-not?' Who was a
‘
have-not?' Henri? No, not him. He was with Sylvie and she wanted to write to him and they had less than a minute and Henri looked into her blue-green eyes and she touched his arm gently, and they kissed.

When they got up out of the chair and stepped down from the boarding ramp, Henri's legs felt rubbery. They walked past the fence to Sylvie's parents and she said, “
Maman
,
papa,
this is my friend, Henri Morin.” After Sylvie had said good-bye, he watched her a long time going down the thoroughfare with her parents. He held onto the metal fence and watched the wheel turning and their green chair, number eighteen going by. He stood there a long time getting used to the new feeling for he had never truly been a ‘have' before.

T
he sky was a bright blue, with not a cloud in it and, on the outskirts of the bay, the water had lost its early morning calm and whitecaps were beginning to appear. The students sat with their life jackets leaning against the moist grey steel of the
Madeleine
's cabin. A few sat in the two drive boats in tow, with their collars up, smoking and facing back towards Washika.

Alphonse stood at the wheel. He touched the throttle lightly and reached back for the tall wooden stool.

“Well Henri,” he said. “You passed a good weekend?”

“Yes,” Henri replied. “And you?”

“Ha! At my age, you know, they're all the same.”

Henri sat on the wooden box. He leaned back against the railing. Behind him the engine pounded out a steady rhythm with her six pistons. He slid a pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. Henri opened the pack and offered it to Alphonse.

“Well sure,” Alphonse laughed. “You know, you can always tell when a man gets to be my age. He rolls all the time, even weekends. So when he comes back after a weekend in town, he still has tobacco and papers in his shirt pocket.”

“Yes, I suppose we spend too much. But, in town or out with a girl, rolling? I don't think I could do it.”

“After a while, you stick to taverns. And the girls, well, they become women and they know what it is to save money.”

Alphonse slid off the stool and stood at the wheel as they approached the point where the gulls nested. Henri looked out at the birds and how they became excited and lifted off the rocks and circled the
Madeleine
. They looked exactly the same, white with grey on their backs and long yellow bills with small, yellow bead eyes and feet like a duck:
Larus argentatus
, the herring gull. Henri had looked it up in his father's library. They were exactly the same as the gulls that gathered around the metal drums in the parking space on Chemin de Notre-Dame where people went to eat their noon lunches by the river. But here, at Washika Bay along the shores of the Cabonga, the birds were not the same. In town, most people looked upon the birds as just another form of nuisance to be endured. At Washika, however, the gulls were an important part of the Cabonga Reservoir, an element that contributed to its splendor. Many things were different at Washika. Even the air did not smell the same.

“Alphonse?” Henri said.'

“Yes, Henri,” Alphonse replied before Henri had time to say anything further.

“Alphonse, would you like to live here at Washika?”

“I work here.”

“Yes, I know. But, would you not like to live here someday? Maybe somewhere in off the beach?”

“Ha! You noticed it, eh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You've been here, what, a month and a half? And already you see the difference.”

“From Ste-Émilie, you mean?”

“Ste-Émilie, Lac des Montagnes, Louville, any large town. You're lucky to see it so young. Me too, I learned it a long time ago. I didn't always work here. And I didn't always live in Ste-Émilie.”

“But you like it here?”

“Oh yes. Still, there are some here who don't know anything. They hope all the time to find work in Ste-Émilie, or the Capital maybe. Somewhere, where they can drive to work in the morning, and visit the tavern on their way home at night. But, they don't know. They've always worked here.”

“But you wouldn't live here,” Henri continued. “You would rather live in Ste-Émilie.”

“I didn't say that. My woman might say that.”

Alphonse laughed and slapped Henri on the shoulder.

“Here, hold her steady,” he said.

Henri got up from the wooden box to stand at the wheel.

“There, just like that,” Alphonse said. “I won't be long.”

Henri sighted over the tip of the anchor to a sandy cove shimmering in the early morning heat. The sun was at its highest and only slightly to the left and Henri guessed that they were headed almost due south.

“Where we headed, Alphonse?”

“Pàgwàshka Bay,” Alphonse opened the door and went out on deck.

Pàgwàshka, at least there was always a wind. That's what the old ones said. No bugs and no water. Pàwashka, they said, was only a quarter the size of Washika Bay, with mostly dead trees,
chicots
, dotting its shallow waters and the shore. There was always a good wind, from the north, but it was not a good place for tugboats. For the drive boats it presented no problem. Even the Russel, with its two-cylinder engines and the steel cage around its screw propeller, could get around in there without too much difficulty. But for a six-cylinder tugboat like the
Madeleine
, the shallow water at Pàgwàshka Bay always meant trouble.

Henri held onto the wheel with one hand. He touched the throttle lightly with the other. The lever had been painted grey, like the
Madeleine
, but now it was ebony, mostly, from the paint being worn off, fondled by Alphonse and her captains before him. Henri felt near the lower portion of the lever, where it had cracked once and was now smooth and shiny from the bronze the welder had used to mend the break. Henri wanted to tell Alphonse about Sylvie. Later, he might speak to Lavigne and the others about her, but not yet. Things were just beginning. There was nothing solid yet. Telling them now, so soon, might spark their interest: if Sylvie Lanthier were willing to go out with Morin, she would probably like to go out with me…or some such nonsense. How many would think like that? Worse, how many would put it to the test? No. Later, when Sylvie was certain that it was he, Henri Morin, that she wanted and no other person would do, he might flaunt his love affair to the crowds, and never have to worry, or maybe he would come to speak like Lavigne and all the other ‘haves' that he knew.