Washika (34 page)

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 brief 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…”

T
he 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.

It was a perfect little bay. The land sloped high on both sides and the bay narrowed as it approached the dam. To the east, high up on the bank, was a two-storey frame house, white with green trim around the windows and the railing that ran all along the verandah at the front of the house. A well-kept lawn sloped down towards the water. In the centre of the lawn a tall, peeled jack pine held a Union Jack waving in the breeze. Henri was puzzled by the flag. At the pay office where
Monsieur
Lafrance had prepared their pay cheques, there was also a Union Jack in the yard. Henri did not understand. His father said that they had their own flag but it was only seen during the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade. A government agent lived there with his family, Alphonse had told him, perhaps the man and his family came from overseas, from England maybe. The agent's work had something to do with the control of water levels but Alphonse was not sure about that. Nobody was sure of what the government agent was supposed to be doing there. The man rarely went outside although the children were often seen playing on the lawn.

Henri stood on deck by the cabin doorway. He could smell the pulpwood and, as they approached the west side of the bay, he recognized the sweet fern growing along the hillside. The shore was littered with huge grey-black boulders and, above these, the bank rose steeply. There were tall, skinny jack pine all along the slope with blueberry bushes and sweet fern growing beneath. As Henri scanned the shoreline, his brain seemed to register what he saw but was constantly being pushed and shoved into another awareness, constantly being reminded of one prominent factor, the invariable, ever-present roar of the
chute
as the water rushed through the gap, brown and froth-white, with its cargo of logs tumbling end over end.

The
Madeleine
and the
Hirondelle
were made fast to the boom timbers less than thirty feet offshore. The students stepped onto the boom and made their way ashore. As they moved closer to the gap, they were forced to raise their voices in order to be heard. When a breeze blew in from the south, they could feel the moist spray rushing in from the gap. They stared at the black, rushing water, and the white foam forming around the groups of logs that swirled in the current as they were herded towards the gap.

A boardwalk had been constructed along both sides of the bay and ended at the opening in the dam, at the gap. The boardwalks were simple wooden platforms, lumber nailed across two long, floating logs with a railing on both sides. Henri stepped over the chain holding the boardwalk to shore and boarded the platform. Holding onto the railing, he could feel the rushing water vibrating the planks of the boardwalk. It made him dizzy just looking at it. Closer to the dam, the wood moved more swiftly, some logs swirling round, others following straight courses or sticking straight up out of the water. The logs danced in all of these ways, faster and faster, in one and only one direction and then they were gone, disappearing through the gap, that great hole in the dam. Henri looked up at the black, squared timbers of the dam, and those that had been raised to open the gap, and the gear wheels and chains where Armand had cranked up the timbers early that morning. Now, the gap was open, the wood was being moved out, and somewhere along the banks of the Gens-de-Terre, a lone raccoon sat puzzled by the sudden rise of water as he added another empty mussel shell to the pile in front of him.

Alphonse walked past the students clinging to the railing and looking at the fast-moving water. He made his way to the mouth of the gap where a short, elderly man poked at the moving logs with a pike pole.

“Yes sir!” Alphonse shouted.

“Yes sir,” the man replied.

“Did you get word from Ste-Émilie, Armand?”

“Yes just this morning, by radio.”

“No fun, eh?”

“You know how they are.” The man spat on a log as it went by. “Anyway.”

“Yes, I know. Open early?”

“Eight o'clock. Might have opened yesterday but
Monsieur
fancy pants up there,” Armand jerked his thumb towards the agent's house. “He was not ready. You know how they are.”

“Ah yes, I suppose. Anyway, Armand, this is my gang.”

“Yes, eh?” The old man leaned on his pole and looked at the boys standing at the far end of the boardwalk. A smile grew on his face. “Pretty rough looking crew.”

“Oh, they're all right. You just have to get used to them.”

“I'm getting old, Alphonse. I tell you. I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.”

“You?” Alphonse laughed. “I'll be dead and buried and you'll still be here, pushing logs into the Gens-de-Terre.”

“Ha!” The old man raised a thumb against his left nostril and blew hard, wiping the remaining mucus with the back of his hand.

Further back along the boardwalk, the boys watched Alphonse and the old man as they spoke. They could not hear the words over the roar of the gap. But they could tell by the look on their faces, the way the old man spat on the water, and how they both laughed as Alphonse slapped the old one's shoulder. They could tell, just seeing them, that Alphonse and Armand Lafond were one of a kind. To the twenty young log drivers standing at the gap on the Cabonga, this was a very good sign.

S
o, this was Cabonga. The fellows let their packs fall at their feet as they reached the crest of the hill. They looked at one another and smiled. This was not Washika with its green flat buildings and electric wires and enormous tractor-trailers stopping at the scales. This was what they had expected, what they had sketched upon their imaginations when they first received word that they were going to Washika for the summer; before them, in a sandy clearing surrounded by spindly jack pine, stood the camp. The building was longer than it was wide, made of logs with the bark left on. A low-sloping roof, covered in tarpaper, extended several feet beyond the front of the building and there was a small landing made of boards before the door. At the far end of the cabin, a rusted stovepipe stuck out of the wall, held up by two lengths of wire anchored to rafter poles near the edge of the roof. In the same clearing and overlooking the bay were two other cabins.