Pauline is pulled toward the bottom, the swells suck her in, the life jacket doesn’t protect her at all anymore, but Pauline isn’t panicking, she smiles, she glimpses the salmon that Jo loves to catch so much, a stream of silver bodies follow her, gently dive alongside her, they loop around Pauline, calmly vanish, the last thing Pauline sees is the eye of a sperm whale right next to her body …
Waking up is brutal, Pauline’s lungs burn, too many cigarettes, not enough fresh air, she thought she heard Leena, but she’s not around. Pauline gets up, makes herself some tea, outside, the grey body of the Great River is prickled with rays of sunshine.
The beginning
Leena paces up and down the gravel driveway, the salty air is invigorating, the smell of seaweed and fish is a powerful weapon against sadness, she has studied the sea a long time, as though she hoped it would spit out a secret. The gulls disgrace themselves with their jeering, a few children play ball, at the shoreline, they’re screeching even louder than the birds.
When Leena goes back inside, she finds her mother with a mug of tea, a vacant stare, the aroma of simmering stew fills the air, Leena holds back from talking about her plan to join the immersion program in Montreal, stuffs the brochure into her pocket. Her mother looks at her uneasily, she pours her some tea with a trembling hand, there’s complete silence, except for the tick-tock coming from the kitchen, Leena quickly gulps down half her tea.
“You should drink tea slowly, savour it.”
“Like beer?”
Pauline ignores her daughter’s sarcasm, she places her well-worn book on marine mammals in front of her, she smooths it out flat with her hand, absentmindedly. She goes and makes a pretense of tasting the stew and then comes back and sits down.
“I have a surprise for you. Tomorrow I’m going to take you somewhere.”
“And where’s that?”
“It’s a surprise. You’ll find out tomorrow. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning.”
“Uh-huh?”
“Yes. I’m going out for an hour or so. We’ll eat when I get back. If you’re hungry, you can serve yourself right away, but turn down the element.”
“I’m not hungry. I can wait.”
Leena wonders why her mother has brought her to the beach so early, the sky is pink, an almost florescent pink, a flock of birds twists beneath the almost beige clouds, it’s clearly going to be a beautiful day. An early morning walker pulls on his dog’s leash, it’s running every which way, it wants to feel the waves on its fur, Leena thinks, but the water is freezing cold, its owner has a hard time holding it back. Leena feels impatient, she sees her mother pulling on a plastic tarp along the dock.
“What are you doing? It’s long.”
Her mother pushes her hands against the hull of a rather rusty fishing boat, she looks it over a long time, silently, she checked the motor last night and everything works as expected. She instructs Leena to get into the boat.
“Come on! I’m not leaving without you!”
“Where did you get this boat?” Leena cries.
“It’s ours. It’s been a long time since I used it, but the motor still works very well. Your dad’s always way too busy.”
“It’s your boat? No, it can’t be!”
“It’s our boat. It’s yours too.”
“I don’t even know how to start the motor, much less steer.”
“You’ll learn, like everyone else.”
Leena climbs in, the sides of the boat are freezing cold, despite the little bit of rust, the boat is in good condition. Leena’s mother has a faint smile on her face, her eyes are not glassy like usual, she rediscovers a feeling she had lost, the thrill that skimming over the bobbing ocean brings, Pauline starts up the motor. Leena sits on her seat, her back poker straight, she doesn’t speak, hardly moves her arms. The boat smashes through waves and more waves, the early morning sun spreads out its rays, Pauline squints, a few more metres, she thinks. Leena feels a strange sensation, the feeling of freedom or of abandonment, something she’s been searching for for a long, long time. The boat suddenly slows down and her mother cuts the motor.
“Now, pay attention. If we’re patient, we might see something spectacular.”
An hour later, Leena feels completely frozen, she whines, her mother asks her to wait a few minutes more.
Then, she catches a glimpse of a dorsal fin, a spray idly shooting up from a blowhole, the whales bask in the sun, majestic, they cause the sea to thunder. Leena soaks in every sight, the salty water and the rocking of the boat add to the magnificence of the moment. She clutches on to one of the handles, without a doubt this boat is a sign of freedom.
Leena tells herself that the whales are there to slow time down. The moment is free from all pain and worry, the moment they come up to the surface for air.
Quebec
Gulping Down the Storm
The grey sky is blackening, liquid coal is spilling through the air, he can feel the approaching gong of the storm. Henry lugs his old camo backpack, his arms hang limply at his sides, worn out with exhaustion, he’s been trudging down the little gravel road for about twelve kilometres, he’s thirsty, his jeans are spattered with mud, prickled with twigs, scabbed with clay, he has a few scratches on his face, signs of many nights spent in the forest. He’s waiting for the storm to burst, so he can open his mouth and gulp the whole thing down. He’s hungry, he thinks back to three days ago, to that beleaguered hare, the critter was frantically bounding through the woods. He didn’t want to waste the precious few bullets he’d been saving, so he chased the hare, ran after it a good five kilometres. He then hurried to roast his catch on a split for several hours, someone stole the rest of his booty during the night; a bear, undoubtedly.
He keeps running into colossal pines, they commandingly tower at least thirty metres above him, they’re intimidating, Henry feels like they’re inching closer, trying to bar his way. He can’t see any clearing, just a lush green wall sixty metres long. He tries to get a hold of himself, being alone in the forest makes a person paranoid, a storm is brewing inside him, like the storm outside that’s been taunting him for a long time now. When he was little, nothing made him more afraid than being alone in the forest, his heart would seize up at the first signs of nightfall, his body would transform into a high-voltage pylon, his fears would proliferate at lightning speed.
He sits down on a flat rock, out of breath; his legs refuse to go on. He takes in his surroundings; the twisted branches, tiny yellow butterflies skimming low, luxurious ferns and grasses. A small chipmunk zigzags over the ground, equally dithered by the storm, it runs to take shelter. Henry unstops his dirty thermos and plunks it directly into the ground, he can’t wait for the rain, begs it to come—quickly. He’s sick of yomping about like this, directionless, the first droplets open their song on the leaves. Henry takes off his shirt and bares his chest to the rain, he pretends he’s soaping up. He unzips his jeans, sends his boxers flying, kicking them off his ankle, he’s completely naked in the fresh rain. He bares his scrawny body to the woods.
Knowing that the rain has plastered his body at every angle, he tries to quickly dry himself off with his windbreaker. He snaps a few branches off the nearest tree, a poplar, the tree smells like wet dirt. He stuffs a few leaves from one poor branch into his mouth. They’re hard to chew, he spits them out. He feels feverish, he needs to get some sleep before he’s too weak to find the shack. Even if the very last thing he wants is to find the place that has spawned every one of his fears. Sometimes he would rather die than suffer the stormy blows of the villagers.
Henry wakes up, stiff and sore, bites everywhere, he fingers his face streamered with scrapes, the lashes of rain, he already feels the hard buckling of unattended wounds. With his fingertips, he inspects his ribs, caresses his protruding bones, awkwardly probes, he presses his index finger over his ribcage. He examines the inside of his mouth the same way, he counts his teeth, slides his tongue over cavities he knows are black. He thrusts his
finger to the very back of his mouth to tickle his throat, the urge to vomit. A young buck wanders by, stock-still, it studies Henry attentively, its big black eyes gaze deep into Henry’s very being. Henry cannot stand the buck’s gaze. This gaze drives Henry to his breaking point, high voltage, the sordid cloak of shame, which has wrapped around Henry ever since he was born. He hesitates to raise his rifle, his body convulses at the idea of shooting down the animal out of pure vengeance; but then, he is hungry. He should kill the animal and clear off as soon as he can. He would have some food to share and his mom would be so proud to see him coming home carrying an animal. Henry hesitates, Murray promised him he would be there bright and early to help him build his cabin. Murray is Henry’s godfather, his armour, the only person who matters to him other than his parents. He doesn’t want to disappoint him.
A young boy tightly clenches the rope that binds Henry to the tree, a second boy busies himself with knots, he yanks the rope so hard he rips his palm open, drawing blood. Two other boys keep Henry pinned down so he can’t move, except for his eyes, which bulge with fear, he doesn’t get what’s going on, why these boys are tying him up like this; at first, he thought it was a game, a harmless joke, but the boys have become aggressive, they’re tying him up way too tight for it to be a game.
“Ok, now, Joe, you keep this varmint tied super tight. We can’t mess this up.”
“You got the arrows?”
“Yep, look in the bag, but be careful with the rest of the stuff, can’t leave any evidence behind.”
“Gosh, man! Of course, we’re going to leave traces. Like, have you seen his face? Look at the varmint closely. It’s not going to be the same face pretty soon.”
The boy clutching the rope pulls an arrow out of the bag, he puffs out his chest, a bloodthirsty warrior for a few seconds. He aims at Henry’s face, draws back the bow, stalls, smiles weakly. He lowers the bow.
“I don’t want to go first!”
“What kind of crap is this! We haven’t got all afternoon! You aim, then you let go, you sissy!”
“I’m no sissy. I just don’t like drawing blood for no reason like this.”
“Ok, fine then. I’ll go first, but you pay attention and then do it afterwards, no excuses.”
Henry doesn’t feel well, he feels like puking, he feels nervous, like when his mom is gone for several days after promising to come back. He doesn’t want to play with the boys anymore, he doesn’t like them anymore. He trembles, no one notices how distressed he is, his anxiety swells bigger and bigger by the second, then it bursts: he pees himself.
“Hahaha! Just look at that fucking little bastard! The son of a bitch! He’s pissed himself. Come on, Chris! Hurry up! Shoot!”
The boy who made the knots lets the first arrow fly, a wave of chock, the catapult. Henry didn’t see any of this coming, his vision’s blurred, he feels something running down his ear. He panics, he sees red, he bawls like a donkey; actually, he doesn’t bawl, he literally brays.
“Shut up. They’ll catch us. There’s only three left; after that, we’ll let you go, but you had better shut your ugly mouth. If you don’t, we won’t just shoot a few arrows; we’ll beat you ‘till you’re dead. It’s just a game, only a game, so you better not make another noise.”
“For heaven’s sake, Chris! He won’t shut up, like anyone would. You’re not being fair. Joe, stuff a gag in his mouth.”
Henry is terrified, no one will hear him with this piece of scarf in his mouth. He spits the scarf out as hard as he can. Joe goes to whack him hard on the head, but the wind shifts direction.
One of the two boys who were holding Henry takes his turn with the bow, he shakes a bit, he doesn’t seem very in control of himself—which terrifies Henry all the more, he screams again, terror-stricken. At that very moment, the violent wind gusts the bow a bit ahead. The pines sway, heftily cracking at every node, the boys could almost swear they heard shots coming from the far edge of the forest.
“Go on! Hit this bastard son of a bitch; then we’ll scoot. It will be your turn another time, suckers!”
The boy does what he’s told, but misses Henry by a hair. Henry screams, he feels like he’s going to faint, he feels like water, his limbs seem to belong to someone else.
“Oh well, let’s go, let him scream, someone will eventually come get him.”
The boys quickly stuff the arrows into the backpack. Joe looks around hoping no one else witnessed this humiliating scene. He seems to sense the presence of another, maybe an animal, probably a deer, definitely not a bear, they would sense one kilometres away. Chris grabs the backpack savagely. He’s furious, he spits several times in Henry’s face before socking him several times with the backpack, he strikes Henry so many times that he, the attacker himself, runs out of breath. The others tell him to hurry up. But he ignores them, furious, and throws one last rock at Henry, who passes out, at wit’s end, completely liquefied by fear. He succumbed to the four varmints. What he doesn’t know is, just a few metres away, Murray is looking for him, he started worrying when he noticed him gone this morning and set out to find him, it was those screams of terror that led Murray up to the edge of the forest. He knows nothing of Henry’s hiding places, a game he hadn’t left behind in childhood. Murray sees the four boys tormenting his protege. Normally, he would have sprung out to give them a licking and to knock them down with a blow or two, but he impatiently waits until the boys pack up their murderous kit to jump them. In the village, everyone knows Murray for his many stunts, he even made one of the local newspapers, miscreants of all types fear him like the devil himself, some inmates still have nightmares, at night they dream of knocked-out teeth, skulls smashed against the sink. Murray had always detested injustice and always vowed to make those who commit it pay.
Murray hangs back in the shadows, on watch at the edge of the woods. He’s waiting for the right moment to spring upon them. He presses his back against a tree, eyes alert, the barrel aimed at the ruffians. He pretends to pull the trigger several times just for the fun of it, the fear a gun pressed against their temple would incite, the hysteria, the tears it would provoke. He can imagine them crying for their mom, their dad, God. He knows very well that he can’t point his gun at the boys, he would never kill a kid, but Henry’s suffering drives him insane, afflicts him, he feels it somewhere inside, it wrenches into him like a gimlet. Murray had always found Henry to be a shining spirit, he had always believed his naïveté would protect him from this world. Today Murray realizes he was mistaken.
The moment the boys quit the forest and the dirt road, Murray jumps in front of them, he stands a good head taller, towering above them with rage; the boys recoil, intimidated, frightened before this man with massive, powerful arms, crisscrossed with tattoos and scars. They know who Murray is, they run into him from time to time in the village, the evil eye, they know what he is capable of, they’re scared of him, the surprise is especially unpleasant because they thought he was in prison. He wraps his gigantic hands around the four ruffians, who are already deep in the nightmare, he yells at them and threatens them.
“If I ever see you lurking around Henry again, approaching him or, worse, daring to touch him, I promise you the carnage of the century, and not a single one of your poor little faces will be spared.”
To prove his statement, he grabs the boy who made the knots and strikes him, he strikes him so hard that the ruffian crumples to the ground, in tears, frozen, incapable of getting up, partially because he’s ashamed and partially because he’s hurt. The three other boys leave him whining on the ground and take off. Murray yanks the boy to his feet and spits in his face.
“You’ve got ten seconds to get lost. Otherwise, I’ll give you the spanking your parents should have given you a long time ago, you poor little idiot. I despise you, you and your gang of little idiots. You decide to hurt the boy and to do it with weapons even, eh?”
Murray goes and unties Henry, tosses some muddy water on his face to wake him up. When the
boy comes to, he seems paralyzed with fear; when he recognizes Murray, he calms down, clings to his saviour’s arm like a buoy and lets himself be carried. Murray pulls the boy onto his back without saying a word, he feels the poor little victim’s heart beating wildly against his back. At that very moment, a warm jet gushes down his side; Henry is peeing again.
Henry inspects his drawing one last time, a smile dancing on his lips, he’s proud of his meticulous work; every board, every nut and screw, every detail is represented to scale on his blueprints, blueprints worthy of a fickle architect. At the top of the blueprints, he has written Henry’s cabin in cursive with touches of filigree; when it’s all finished, Henry would really like a plaque introducing his little cabin. But he figures it would be one more reason for the brutes to come and sack his happiness by kicking it in with their feet or—even worse—by hacking it down with hatchets. At the very idea, Henry shivers. Murray had solidly warned them, but ever since Henry has feared the worst. Upon hearing the story, his mother fell to the floor, sobbing on the ground, her son’s pain crushed her, his pain was now her pain. A few days later, she slipped a Swiss pocketknife into her son’s favourite jacket, even though she knew he wouldn’t use it, he wouldn’t dare to take on an enemy with a knife, it isn’t like him. He’s incapable of violence; even when it cames to hunting, it took him years to learn how to shoot down a deer and then gut it. He said that the deer was in pain and that he could feel it.
Henry crosses several hundred metres of forest; he left red flagging tape to mark the construction site, Murray should be waiting for him today to begin building, he should be waiting for him right there, by the tape. Henry prepared a picnic all by himself in anticipation of this wonderful day: sandwiches with pickles, lemonade, dried fruit, and his mother’s pumpkin pie. Henry starts to worry, he hasn’t seen any signs of Murray, even though the cabin should be nearby, he clutches his bag of tools. He’s getting scared. He looks at his watch: it will be noon in one minute. Henry pushes aside the many branches barring his way; he had thought of cutting down most of the objectionable brush to make a little path to the hideaway, but then he changed his mind, he didn’t want to destroy the forest, he wanted only to live in it, blend into it.
A Blanket Against Darkness Page 7
