When he finally arrives at the red flagging tape, he doesn’t see any sign of Murray or anyone else, he starts to get scared; he’s worried maybe someone wants to do his uncle in. Maybe the fathers of the little idiots, as Murray calls them, decided to get back at him. Maybe he’s the one now tied to a tree, somewhere in this immense forest. He steadies himself against a big tree that should work as a pillar for the little building and feels something across the trunk, something like a long plank of wood. He sees another one above him, raises his head, Murray arrives, humming away, apologizes for being late.
“I know it’s two minutes past noon,” he says glancing at his watch. “But I have two surprises for you. The first is above your head and the second is the big gentlemen just behind me. Let me introduce you to Jay.”
Henry freezes when he sees the man, Jay is one of those stocky, muscular types with platinum blond hair, he has a small, tight mouth and steel-blue eyes, his voice is strong and it resounds through the forest.
“Look above you, Henry, look at the planks of wood.”
The planks of wood are steps leading to the cabin, from the outside, it looks entirely finished, Henry is suddenly all jittery.
Swaying quite a bit, gripped with emotion, Henry mechanically climbs the twelve steps that separate him from the cabin, Murray and Jay follow him, Jay almost tumbles, the steps are too narrow for his big feet. Henry cries for joy when he enters the cabin, there are pillows in a corner and crayons and paper too. This is not at all what he had sketched out in the blueprints, but Henry finds it so much prettier. Murray wraps an arm around his shoulders.
“Now, you have three homes,” he says. “Your mom’s place, my place, and here. This cabin, the cabin of your dreams, is your place now, but under one condition; even if this cabin is now your sanctuary, you have to promise me that you will come see me pretty often, you can’t bury yourself in the forest.
“It’s a promise, Murray. It’s a promise.”
Henry promises, his voice cracking with emotion. Jay comes up, holds out his hand, almost crushes Henry’s puny little one; it’s not a hand, it’s a paw, Henry thinks.
“It’s a hell of a gift, this is, boy!”
“Yeah! It is!”
“Jay helped me build it. We cut down trees like crazy for a week, from sunrise to sunset, while you were recovering. So, what do you say, should we eat that picnic of yours? I’m hungry!”
Henry unwraps his victuals and offers his uncle and Jay sandwiches. He thanks Jay, tells him he can come visit him as often as he likes. Henry is thrilled, thrilled to finally have a sanctuary where he can cohabitate with nature and without fear.
The Great Forest
Billy stretches his neck, lazily kicks the few dandelion aigrettes that are still intact. The air is fresh, invigorating, the naked scents of spruce, white birch, and humus crystalize in his nostrils. He basks in the four o’clock sun, revisits an old dream of sculpturing. He relives an excursion to Ottawa two years earlier, a rather dull trip, where he wandered about aimlessly before exploring the National Gallery of Canada. Discovering Roger Aksadjuak’s Inuit sculptures had sparked a thrill that was still so real, Billy remembers the knife’s etching on the stone in minute detail, the polished bones that pierced the air. He had felt Aksadjuak’s characters live, drum inside of him, he carried them with him for days afterward like a decal imprinted on his own skin. Everything a person needs to become a sculptor is here, he thinks; a regiment of black spruces, a picture-perfect backdrop, where rivers, forests, and shrubbery intermingle. The artist who comes from Montreal to stock up on uncontaminated life, fresh air, majestic variations of forest, and thick ferns can leave only after having attempted the ultimate communion. Those who return to the city brew a weak memory of the place, focusing on what they saw or gathered, what they could eat; a story inspired by the earth. Those who stay beseech the very quintessence of wilderness and let nothing escape them: the cries of the birds, the sunsets, the grunts of an animal far off. Billy pursues his reverie, partially to escape the reality that has been hounding him for a while, he had always known how to recover, thanks to the forest, liquefying its secrets … to work against her, against his will … It had all begun when a logging contractor decided where the new borders of the woods would be.
Billy remembers long winter months where he couldn’t hunt, the first signs of anxiety appeared, he noticed them far too often. He remembers the hunger that settled over the reserve. The Algonquins despaired all the more when spring came, but the logging contractor was committed to making sure this memory would be forgotten, he replaced it with another, one that was far worse. He showed up at the reserve one rainy day with his armada of lumberjacks, he laid out his plan to widen the river. He had conducted all sorts of necessary research on the site, he said, and this was the best place to do it, so he thought. He piled promises and wads of money on the band council chief’s desk, a decided no and his project fell through. But the contractor had one last card to play: he knew that if he included the First Nations in his demolition plan, the band council chief would have to give in; no chief wants to see his people wither away.
Now the forest withdraws into itself, inwardly shreds its secrets, the only witnesses are the animals, the plants. But humans also participate in the activity. This self-sufficient zone that spreads for kilometres and kilometres is both heaven and hell for Billy and his people. For dozens of kilometres, it’s the humans who set their traps.
Billy watches his white coworkers out of the corner of his eye, mostly men in their forties; they have tattoos that have turned blue and green over the years, time has marked their skin and washed their gaze, most of them have never worked with an Indigenous man or even set foot on a reserve. They don’t know that several metres away, at a watering hole, deer have been gathering together for years. They don’t know what kind of trees they’re flaying, know even less how to distinguish them by smell or touch alone, like Billy sometimes does. Billy doesn’t work the same way the others do, and he’s ridiculed for it: he spends time worrying about the age of the trees, presses his palms against their bark, studies the size of the cuts, he confidently feels his way about, blindfolded.
Only one young man about his own age has sympathy for Billy, a big fellow who sports a tattoo of a ferocious animal gleaming in the sun, he offers Billy cigarettes sometimes and chats with him during the breaks. He’s different, with him, Billy slums it and swears. His friend finds this hilarious and teases him in turn like someone laughing at a child whose pants are too big for him. One day, one of the men found Billy pretending to be a white guy, he spat angrily on Billy’s feet, this is no place for humour, no excess of camaraderie between the whites and the Algonquins on the worksite.
Billy quickly learned that this project of widening the river had a hidden component: deforesting the area as a first step. They began by cutting down a few trees at the water’s edge and ended up massacring about a hundred trees at the teeth of the saw. The thought of returning to starvation convinces him to stay put; he doesn’t say a word. The first few days of May brutally end in a concert of sharpened axes.
One of Billy’s friends, Dean, takes him aside. Horrified and short-winded, he lets loose a tumble of words.
“Have you gone and walked on the north side of the river?”
“No, buddy, I don’t really have time these days. Look at that pile of logs over there. I cut them down this morning.”
“Exactly. You need to go take a walk and see. It’s horrifying. There are hundreds of trees that have been gnawed to the core. There’s no more left along the river’s edge. He had us start with axes, like it was no big deal, but he knew very well that we would go on to use saws, because there’s way too much ground to deforest. He tricked us like that, the dog, acting like we would just do some work with axes. There are guys over there who started deforesting with saws and that, I tell you, means the area they plan on deforesting is definitely over a hundred metres.
Billy begins to fe
ar the worst; a field of bleak stumps as far as the eye can see, a vision of the end of the world. He heads to the other side of the river hoping to still see the same proud, immovable forest. His vision proves true; trunks of trees immortalized in a grey sheet of mud, a few bushes are still standing tall in the midst of the massacre; cords of wood stud this field of despair. He feels sick to his stomach; by his own free will, he helped create this mass grave, he brought this plain of emaciated logs into being. Billy wanders through the scraps of trees and the shreds of sawdust, the sweet smell of freshly cut wood no longer soothes him like it did when he was a child and rested his head on his father’s workbench while, with admiration, he watched his father sculpture wooden animals, toys for rainy days. He goes home, his axe drags in the mud, the only trace of a human presence.
I’m trying to regain my appetite, I don’t really eat anymore, I might drink a bowl of broth, I’m stashing a stock of soup in the fridge and the sight of this slop convinces me I don’t want to swallow a thing. It started with cramps in my abdomen, right near my stomach, a sharp, intense pain. The wood piled up during the day dams up my stomach. I think about that field of grey mud, about the rhythm of the detonators that threaten the wildlife, I haven’t seen the family of deer since. They’re starting to think twice about me, suspicious because I worry over the trees. I can’t block out those visions of bald, scraggy forests, I think about everyone who lived here before me, they would never have permitted a devastation like this. Yesterday, I ran into a young student here to reforest a section just north of the place, I let him talk me into buying half his plants, he thought I wanted them to hide a grow-op, I didn’t bat an eye. The plans are stashed under my veranda, I’m going to reforest a section a bit further south, where there are lots of nests, maybe this way I can wipe my conscience clear, right now, I carry the weight of an entire emaciated forest. One of the men at work found a dead beaver this morning, beavers never drown.
Billy feels feverish, clumsy, the headaches hound him all the way from the worksite to his house. The anxiety of winter resurfaces, anaesthetizes his senses, anchors itself like a lichen on a rotten wall. With this wonderful start to the evening, he wanders about, the saplings still in his backpack, the sky goes from corrida red to deep lavender to the most abyssal blue in existence; Billy usually soaks in these changing colours, fatiguing his eyes as he contemplates the marvelous sight, but tonight he doesn’t have the energy, he walks in search of peace of mind, passes bushes still half warm from the day’s sun. He regrets not inviting a friend over to his place, someone he could confide in, share what’s been devastating him for a while now, how he dreams more and more of sculpturing. He rarely drinks but he unexpectedly finds himself craving alcohol, the craving electrifies first his taste buds and then his throat, just a few more metres, he thinks, and I’ll go home, I’m being absolutely ridiculous, look at me, pushing my way through the forest with my saplings and pickaxe, they’ll end up catching me red-handed and what I’m going tell them? At night, I roam the woods to reforest whatever parts of my land are still dry. He feels fear crawling up over him, like a spider. It’s an irrational fear but it cements itself in the poison where all fears are spawned: apprehension. The fear craftily grows at an indistinct noise. That doesn’t sound like the cries or grunts of an animal. And yet, there is definitely a low panting coming from the forest. Something animal-like, shared by all. Billy gathers up whatever courage he has left after this exhausting day, he can tell by the rustle of the leaves that he’s getting close to something. Believing the noise is close by, he advances carefully, but it turns out to be a long way off, the forest echoing his worse fears.
He tiptoes forward between the black spruce; a few metres ahead, he makes out a young deer, wounded, its flank gashed, its mouth open, it’s still panting. The animal is suffering terribly, in between convulsions, it notices him. He hadn’t come to hunt the deer, but when he sees the animal in the throes of death, he can’t bring himself to leave it here in the wood; he drops his backpack and delivers a blow with his pickaxe, which kills it instantly. The yearling is heavy. The man has a hard time hauling it up, it must weigh as much as its predator. The trek is brutal, he manages to hoist the carcass onto to his shoulders, as though I’m carrying my double, Billy thinks to himself. With some rope, he ties the animal to a snow shovel and lugs it up onto the veranda, knowing several hours of quartering lie ahead of him.
My head hurts so much, my vision is blurred, hazy, after quartering the animal, I watched the hours drag by on every clock in the house. I think about the deer, the meat that’s now in the freezer, I think about the surprised look that will be on my wife’s face when she sees all this meat, it’s the only thought that can make me smile. At first, I just gazed at the deer, minutes went by, I patted its bloody side, it seemed at peace at last. I then applied myself to slicing away the tendons, portioning slabs of meat, quartering the animal with respect. There was blood everywhere: on the wood floor, on the chairs, and even on the wall, the chemical smell of soap and water made me sick, I ended up waking the whole house. My wife was beside herself, she begged me to quickly gather everything up. The kids watched me out of the corner of their eyes, just like they would observe a stranger who’s a bit bizarre.
I washed myself furiously, branches had lacerated my arms and legs on the way home. Rubbing soap over my sores made me want to yell, but I told myself that maybe the pain would help me to see clearly. It was only once I was in the shower that I realized I had left the saplings in the middle of the forest; I got out, I was beside myself.
Outside, the night was black, the air poisonous. I angrily whacked my forehead against the railing; how could I have forgotten the conifers? At that moment, an owl hovered before me, for a brief instant I could admire its golden eyes. I wagered my sleep on some lousy game shows into the wee hours of the morning, I couldn’t doze off even for a moment. Then I thought about the hash I keep for special occasions, is insomnia a special occasion? In any case, I had a few puffs, enough to make me sleepy.
I hit my room around two o’clock in morning, my wife laughed in her sleep, I thought she was mocking me and that she asked, “What sort of grave are you digging?”
At dawn, Billy wanders through the forest, mentally retracing last night’s trip, he carefully passes by wild mushrooms and ferns. The morning sun gives him a splendid view of the whole countryside: bird nests, black spruce, shrubs. He notices a growth of white cedar, I shouldn’t go so far anymore, he thinks. A long trail of blood, now brown, encrusts the ground and the low foliage, Billy scrutinizes every centimetre of ground but doesn’t see his conifers anywhere, all that’s left is the smell of death. He searches in the nearby bushes, his blood starts to get hot, there’s nothing that looks a thing like saplings or the pickaxe he used to clobber the animal. All that’s left are the traces of the animal in the grass, the imprint of a vanished carcass.
Around nine o’clock that morning, Billy begins his work as a pillager again. Every time he looks at the forest, he has the unpleasant impression that he sees shadows darting about in the woods, that he’s taking part in the game, despite himself. The shadows zigzag between the trees, sometimes he catches a glimpse of a colleague; sometimes it’s his wife or his daughter trying to escape something. He has to stop, rest against a tree, I’m just hallucinating, he thinks. His friend innocently teases him about his bluish-purple rings, he thinks they’re from a night of lovemaking. The others look at him suspiciously, stare at him, which makes his paranoia all the worse. They must be thinking that I beat myself up, Billy thinks. His zombie-like movements don’t reassure anyone, they shoot sidelong glances in his direction, some of them distance themselves when he grabs an axe. It’s not until he gets home that he sees himself in a mirror. He looks like something from a horror film: an enormous scrape, like a cross, grazes his forehead, a nasty scab has formed on the raw skin, Billy gingerly touches his wound, inspects it. He’s almost certain this mark wasn’t there this morning; then he remembe
rs that he smacked his head against the railing. He grabs a bottle of water and heads back into the forest, in search of his precious saplings, this one thought has tied the whole day together: how many spruces to clear my guilty conscience, to gain my pardon? He squishes Lippee the cat with his foot, the cat resembles an accordion, sprawled out full length like this; he too feels like a toy that someone just dropped there.
The wound is turning black like a sooty smear; I’m sporting a black cross right in the middle of my forehead, my sins are on display for everyone to see. I hardly sleep anymore, my nocturnal rambles have ended up cloistering me in the house for good, I’ve managed to use up that whole block of hash, and I never smoke. I’m thinking about that delirious hideaway this morning, the hallucination of my wife, my daughter running as fast as they could to who knows where. The others are going to end up figuring out that I’m the one who sowed those conifers far and wide. A noise far off, I perk up my ears and try to filter out the natural sounds of the forest: the frogs croaking, a bird flapping its wings, overly enthusiastic crickets; the buzz is still there. I tell myself it must be all the hash that’s making me all wonky, my face feels like it’s stinging, like thousands of ants are bustling through my veins, pharaoh ants through each of my arteries. The feeling lasts a few more minutes. The ants tramp on inside, as though in a parade or a funeral march, it’s exasperating.
A Blanket Against Darkness Page 8
