Washika (8 page)

“No sir. That's fine sir.”

“What do you say, eh? Simard-Comtois is the big boss here. He could fix it for you.”

“No sir. That's fine. Everything's fine.”

Dumas had been looking towards the table where Simard-Comtois sat as he spoke. He turned then and looked at André with his deep, black eyes.

“I will tell you something then,” he said. “The next time you feel like having your breakfast a little later than usual you can join your friend Simard-Comtois in his cabin. What do you say, eh?”

“Yes sir.”

Dumas took the meal ticket from André and put it in his shirt pocket. He stared at the table opposite the students, where Simard-Comtois sat, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. At the end of the table, nearest the door, Simard-Comtois had stopped eating. He was breathing silently through his nose and staring hard at the cook. Desrosiers and the two scalers looked at each other and at their plates. They did not look at the superintendent.

S
ometime during breakfast it had stopped raining and the dark clouds had disappeared leaving only scattered puffs of white ones in a blue sky.

Henri was disappointed. He sat on his bunk in the bunkhouse-and-office rolling a cigarette. There was not much time. In less than ten minutes the bell calling all to make their lunches would ring. He could not decide on his own not to go out to work. If he made up his lunch pail, there was no longer any decision to be made. He lit his cigarette and left the bunkhouse-and-office.

When he arrived at Alphonse's room in the main sleep camp, the air was thick with tobacco smoke. Alphonse was sitting on his bunk talking to two men sitting on the opposite bunk.

“Well, well,” Alphonse said. “And how's my little copilot this morning?”

“Oh, fine,” Henri replied.

“A lot drier than the one in the yard this morning,” one of the men said.

“Dumas fixed him all right,” the other man said.

“And so, Henri,” Alphonse said. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“It's the burn,” Henri said. “I went to see the nurse, you see, and she put on a salve and said to stay out of the sun and it's not raining anymore and look how it blistered.”

Henri opened his shirt. Alphonse looked at the scabs covering Henri's chest.

“All right, Henri,” he said. “You stay in camp today. I'll speak to P'tit-Gus. He'll find you something.”

“Okay. I'll see the nurse later. And I'll tell Dumas that I'll be here for lunch.”

“Yes, that's right. Remember now, you'll be working for P'tit-Gus today. It's him that will be your foreman today.”

“Yes sir.”

Henri went out of the room. As he walked down the hall he could hear one of the men in Alphonse's room saying something about P'tit-Gus and then all of them laughing.

Henri went back to the bunkhouse-and-office. Most of the fellows were stretched out on their bunks, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the lunch bell to ring. André Guy sat alone at a small table shuffling a deck of cards. His hair was still wet and he did not look up when Henri entered the room.

“And? Did you see Alphonse?” Lavigne inquired.

“Yes,” Henri replied.

“And? What did he say?”

“It's all fixed. I'm not going out today.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Maurice St-Jean came over to where Henri and Lavigne were standing by the bed.

“Seeing as you have nothing to do all day,” he said. “You might hang out André's sheets and blankets. It seems that they got kind of wet during the night.”

“Don't laugh,” Henri said. “I'll be working for P'tit-Gus today.”

“Good!” St-Jean went on. “That's good, Henri. At least you'll get paid for doing André's laundry.”

St-Jean walked over to the table. He put his hand on André's shoulder.

“What do you think, André? Henri here will be doing your laundry. Like having your own personal maid.” He turned to Henri. “Go on, Henri. Show him those good legs of yours.”

André's gaze never left the cards. He shuffled them over and over again, like a cat's tail swaying from side to side before a strike.

“Leave me alone,
sacrament
!” André warned.

“Now, now André,” St-Jean continued. “You don't want to hurt his feelings. This is Henri's first time. Look how nervous he is.”

André stood up quickly, his fists clenched. Henri and Lavigne and the two others moved in closer. There had not been a good one in camp since their arrival and, with St-Jean, it promised to be a good one. André rushed St-Jean but he did not move. His feet stayed in one spot as his left shoulder dropped and then he popped André a left to the eye. Just like that, and André was sitting on the floor rubbing his eye.

St-Jean turned to leave when André attacked him from behind. They went down together. St-Jean got a right arm around André's head and, with his left, hit him three times in the face.

“Enough?” said St-Jean, still holding André by the head.

“
Mon tabarnacle
!”

Three more punches to the face.

“Enough now?”

“
Mon sacrament
!”

Another shot to the face. The lunch bell rang, clangity, clangity, clang. St-Jean let go his hold on André. He walked over to the bunk, picked up his lunch pail and went out with the others.

André sat on the floor in the corner. He sat on the floor facing the wall and he was crying softly.

D
umas stood in the centre of the cookhouse collecting the green tickets. The men carrying their lunch pails handed Dumas a ticket and then went on to the table where the older men had eaten earlier. Now there were large platters on the table: ham and pork slices, bread, cheese, pickles, and round, hard biscuits and doughnuts. There were bottles of ketchup and mustard, salt and pepper. At the opposite table, where the pans for dirty dishes had been, were several pots of steaming tea and coffee. There were cans of evaporated milk as well as jugs of powdered milk, ice water and bowls of white sugar for the coffee.

The students stood on both sides of the table with the platters of food. There they made sandwiches with the thick slices of white bread. They wrapped the sandwiches in small squares of waxed paper and stuffed them into their lunch pails. On top of the sandwiches and in vacant corners of their lunch pails, they jammed in cookies and cheese and pickles, also in waxed paper. After they had filled their thermos bottles and placed them inside the covers, some had to lean on their lunch pails to be able to snap the fasteners shut.

Henri stood at the end of the line, the only one not carrying a lunch pail. He felt a fool being there like that and already he was regretting not going out with others. When his turn came, he stood with empty hands before Dumas. He felt naked.

“
Monsieur
Hébert,” he began. “I won't be going out today. I got a very bad burn yesterday.”

“I am not the nurse. Do I look like the nurse, eh?”

“No sir.”

“So, why should I want to know that you got a very bad burn?”

“Yes, well you see, I'll be here for lunch today. I'm not making a lunch. So, I'll be eating here today.”

“And why should that concern me? Eh? Why should I have to know that?”

“If I don't make a lunch that makes one extra person here for dinner”

“And?”

“I just thought you should know.”

“Now I know.”

“Yes. I'm working for P'tit-Gus today.
Monsieur
Hébert, I was wondering?”

“Yes?”

“Well, does it ever happen? I mean, is it possible someday to have chocolate pudding?”

Dumas looked at Henri. He smiled without moving his lips, more a look of disgust than a smile, and one that made Henri wish he was standing somewhere else at that moment.

“You think that this is a summer camp?” he said. “Maybe I should visit in the evenings with cookies and milk? Eh?”

“No sir.”

Dumas turned and walked quickly into the kitchen, leaving Henri standing alone in the centre of the cookhouse. Henri felt more a fool than ever. He wished that he had not spoken of the pudding. Then he thought about P'tit-Gus and he wished that he had not gone to see Alphonse, and he wished that he had not become so excited about seeing Lise Archambault later and, finally, he wished that he had buttoned his shirt properly when Alphonse had spoken to him about it.

Henri left the cookhouse and walked across the yard to the bunkhouse-and-office. Through the screened windows, he could hear Richard Gagnier, the cookee, singing, and pots banging on the stove. As he reached the bunkhouse, he met André Guy. André was carrying his lunch pail and he walked past Henri without looking at him. He was very red around the eyes and there was a swelling above his right cheek.

Henri entered the bunkhouse-and-office. The students had already left and gone down to the wharf. It reminded Henri of once when he had visited his school during the summer vacation, how empty the classroom had seemed and how he could see each of the faces of his classmates at their desks. He had looked at the dull, black chalkboard and imagined that he could see the words and the numbers that had once been written there.

“You're ready?”

Henri turned quickly. He had felt alone in the room. Now the voice had frightened him. He had not noticed the man sitting by the stove.

“There's lots of work to do,” P'tit-Gus declared.

“Yes sir,” Henri said, looking down at the man. “But first, I must go see the nurse.”

“Did Alphonse say that?”

“No sir.”

“All right, you can go. But remember, you're working for me today.”

“Yes sir.”

“Go and see the nurse then. And after, come back and sweep up this place.”

“Yes sir.”

P'tit-Gus pulled at the string that was tied to his pocket watch. He looked at the watch and put it back in its pocket. He walked over to the door and, turning, looked once around the room and went out.

Henri looked out the window. He looked at P'tit-Gus making his way to the main sleep camp. It had clouded over once again and he could hear a light rain falling.

H
enri opened the screen door and then knocked on the thick, hardwood door of the infirmary. It was cold and damp standing on the verandah and his hair was wet from walking across the yard in the rain.

The door opened and Lise Archambault stood in the open doorway. She was wearing a pink nightgown with lace at the wrists and all down the centre. Her brown hair was untied and it slid over her shoulders and down to the small of her back.

“Yes?” she said.

“Hello,” Henri said. “It's about the burn.”

It was warm in the room and the windows were closed and the curtains hung straight down past the sills. It was almost dark in the infirmary but there was a light coming from the back room.

“They are waiting for you?” the nurse asked.

“No, I'm not going out today.”

“Yes, well, have a seat then. You have had your breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“I am just finishing mine. Would you have a coffee while you wait, Henri?”

“Yes, that would be good.”

“Come with me, then.”

He followed her and, as they walked into the light of the back room, she turned to guide him into the small kitchen and as she did so he could see the shape of her breasts and her legs through the pink of the nightgown.

“You take sugar and cream?” she said.

“Yes, that's fine.”

Henri sat at the varnished wood table. The nurse set a place mat in front of him. She brought a cup and saucer with a spoon and placed two small porcelain bowls near them. Henri looked at her hands as she poured coffee from the glass coffeepot. She sat across the table from Henri. There were orange peelings on the place mat and she ate cereal from a white porcelain bowl. Henri added sugar and cream and stirred his coffee with the spoon. He had never felt this way before.

“
Mademoiselle
Archambault?”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering. Maybe I could. Well, what if I were to call you Lise?”

She looked up at Henri.

“Yes. If you like,” she said.

The nurse smiled and Henri looked at her green eyes and how her hair was parted in the middle and flowed down both sides of her head, curving around her cheeks to her neck and shoulders and down her back. Her hands were tanned, like her face. Henri wondered about that. Where would she go to get a tan like that?

Henri drank the coffee. He looked around the room, at the varnished walls and the white refrigerator and stove and the pine cabinets on the wall. At one end of the kitchen there was a couch with lace-covered cushions and, in front of the couch, was a low table with a small bowl of yellow flowers on it. Beyond the couch was a closed door.

“Lise?”

“Yes, Henri?”

“You like it here? Working at Washika?”

“It is not so bad.”

“You must be well paid, being a nurse.”

“Yes, the salary is quite good.”

“Someday, when I finish school, I'll have a job. I'll have a job that pays well and a car. A sports car, you know, like a racing car with spokes on the wheels, and no top.”

They both laughed. Lise got up from the table and gathered the dishes and utensils and placed them in the sink. She ran water over a cloth and passed it several times over the place mat.

“You would like another coffee, Henri?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, if you will excuse me, I will go and change.”

“Lise?” How he loved to say her name like that.

“Yes?” she said, as she entered the bedroom.

“Would you like me to wait on the other side?”