Griffintown

by Marie Hélène Poitras

  Billy crosses the boundaries to get to the next area in search of something to eat. He craves a burger and goes to the drive-through lane. Passersby look him over as if they’ve never in their lives met a horse, as if his mount had five feet. They observe him steadily. All of this gets on his nerves intensely.

  Going back to Griffintown, he is overcome by a strange impression. Yet nothing has changed. The pink door, intact, still closed. Ugly scars crack the asphalt of the streets. The grocery cart has pride of place at the summit of a hill of metal debris. The first drifts of pollen dance on the street like lost souls; each choosing a side, depending on the mood of the wind. The missing-person notices on telephone poles all over are still in place. The ink is paler because of the dew and the paper is slightly swollen, but Paul on the steps of a church is recognizable at first glance, a smile showing all his teeth. Nothing has changed during Billy’s brief absence, yet everything seems different. The echo of horseshoes on manhole covers rebounds off the door of a warehouse. The air has chilled as if a ghost has passed. Billy muses that he and his mare are alone in the world.

  As he approaches the tin castle he hears hungry horses pawing the ground. Train time has come and gone; they’re annoyed. He unsaddles his mount quickly, takes it into its stall, piles a bale of hay in the wheelbarrow, cuts the cord, and starts to feed the animals. A new horse he hasn’t had time to name nips his shoulder, another has bloodshot eyes. He thinks that from now on and throughout the season, the drivers as well as the horses will depend on him. And he remembers, at the sight of a three-legged cat speeding by with a mouse in its mouth, that it’s been a long time since he last filled its bowl. The fate of Griffintown weighs heavily on his shoulders.

  When he has distributed all the rations of oats, Billy goes to the kitchen for a glass of water. That is when he sees on the table, standing unscathed, perfectly unharmed, Paul’s second boot planted like an arrow. Billy clenches his jaws so hard he breaks a tooth.

  THE CONQUEST

  *

  THANKS TO SKETCHES AND everyday tragedies, the heart of Griffintown beats again.

  The new horses have had time to become familiar with the territory, its murmur, its traps, its exhalations, the voices of the drivers. Not many tenderfeet have found a mentor; three or four have persevered but only Marie is likely to stick it out until the end of summer. As for the drivers, they’ve hooked up again with a loved animal or broken in a new arrival, then repainted the corners of damaged fenders, oiled the leather of their harness, their boots and the uprights of the bridles, sanded the chipped wood of the shafts. Men and horses have done everything possible to get the season off to a good start, hooves agile and well shod. Even if the death of Paul Despatie haunts the drivers, they have to forge ahead and start stacking the hay — that’s what Paul would have wanted. La Mouche has tightened his grip, flits around Lloyd and Gerry as if they were a display of meat. Foolishly planted on the skyline, the cross on Mont Royal is of no help to destitute coachmen.

  When he’s not flanked by his ward, John wanders as night falls, has a beer at the stable with Billy, new master of the house. The latter now has his own horse, a world to keep turning and a dead man on his hands to be dealt with. “Every driver has a horse and a calèche,” he repeats as if to reassure himself. But as soon as John leaves, the groom will sit cross-legged on the roof of his trailer, smoke a lot, think things over, spit into the dust. Billy works fiercely, relentlessly at assembling the pieces of an ambitious puzzle that is missing too many pieces.

  The month of May passes, the torments are still there.

  * * *

  IN OLD MONTREAL, AT the top of Place Jacques-Cartier, Le Rôdeur sits on his lawn chair, wears a mischievous smile: he has just robbed an American tourist who had the misfortune to lean over and ask for directions. And that’s it! Gone, the wallet under his prominent belly. The spoils: a thick wad of US bills, some credit cards, and three passports, enough to pay for a steak, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and some contraband cigarettes.

  “What’s that worth, an American passport?” he asks Joe.

  “No idea. Talk to La Mouche’s guys in the Old Port. And bring me a coffee when you come back.”

  “Sure, boss!”

  He tears down the hill on his bike, taking the small street perpendicular to the courthouse, then turns right and heads for the Alexandra Quay. Le Rôdeur meets John who is leading a new horse hitched to the yellow buggy. Marie holds the reins. The errand boy remembers that he heard some drivers gossiping about them. He also notices some tourists in the calèche. John must have picked them up when he got to the old city, not at the stand, which is disapproved of when the season is in full swing but acceptable for another week or two.

  Seeing Le Rôdeur go by on his bike, John smiles, shouts, “Hey, champ!” to which the other man replies with a discreet nod. He hates being called that. The underlying irony wipes out the small amount of pride he still has left. He turns into an alley of damp cobblestones, cursing the coachman.

  Le Rôdeur

  Legend has it that Le Rôdeur stopped washing three decades ago. For a long time he hasn’t scratched himself and is protected now by a fine patina of grime. Over the years he’s been nicknamed “The Vagrant.” He’s become insensitive to cool nights spent in a stall in the stable until the end of October, under the bridges in November, and God only knows where in the winter. When he opens his mouth two gold teeth gleam in the centre of a row of stubs blackened by contraband tobacco. That’s all he owns. Le Rôdeur, like Alice, Lloyd, and several others, has his moments of distress and distraction. He disappears for a few days after dropping in on Evan in his trailer, then comes home, face drawn and wearing the jacket he’s stolen from a highway employee, inside out.

  “Le Rôdeur’s got his head up his ass,” declared Billy, and the errand boy went to the stand but refused to help anyone.

  If Le Rôdeur was evasive when one night John ventured to ask some questions about his past, it was simply because he devoted himself with all his might, all his life, to forgetting it by exhausting himself with whatever came to hand, nose, or veins.

  An orphan who suffered at the hands of a state-run Catholic orphanage, Le Rôdeur spent his youth in a psychiatric institution. For a while he sought refuge in madness, but it rejected him. He escaped from the asylum through a window, in the middle of the night, after a sexual assault. Like Evan, Le Rôdeur escaped from an institution that had nearly wiped him out. Both were damaged by their past but they were survivors, noble in their own way for having survived. They moved forward in life as if tracing the Stations of the Cross, overwhelmed yet struggling.

  Le Rôdeur lived in the stable for a good ten years, in the stall reserved for him by Billy and Paul. In winter, when the horses’ breath was no longer enough to warm his hands, he could sometimes be seen seeking a little warmth in the entries of Métro stations or begging around Square Viger. Because he had lost confidence in the world, Le Rôdeur had adopted anonymity — not having an official or social identity suited him. It was a camouflage and until proven otherwise, no one had been able to track him down. He lived like a partridge with fawn-coloured plumage, pecking his substance in the fallen leaves; he melted into his environment.

  * * *

  LE RÔDEUR'S ABRUPT TURN and the shadow of a bicycle projected in front of Poney make him speed up. Marie pulls moderately on the reins and reassures the horse. Concentrating and in a state of alert, she has gained a great deal of self-confidence over the past weeks. John decides this will be Marie’s last day of training. He’ll notify Billy that evening.

  Le Rôdeur walks past the stand with Joe’s coffee. John beckons him to come closer. He puts the money for three coffees in Le Rôdeur’s hand. “Keep one for yourself.”

  “You’re generous,” observes Marie.

  “Not really. It’s to be sure of good service when I ask him to get me my dinner. You’ll see, nothing here is free. Each person does his own business and the balance is maintaine
d, like an ecosystem, which is why I said ‘No’ when you asked if I wanted you to get me something to drink. Fill the boiler with water for Poney if you want to be useful.”

  The water is much cooler than in the stable. Poney laps slowly, then crunches the lump of sugar offered by his new partner-in-crime. Marie scratches him under the leather harness, at the level of the withers. He bends his head and gently paws the ground with his right front hoof, hopes she’ll scratch his whole body like that — and she will at the stable later on, with a curry comb, when she unhitches him. On the way back, John repeats his advice one last time: “Talk about Indians to Europeans, architecture and history to Americans, point out costume stores to families, and remind the few Montrealers who’ll climb on board of the significance of Je me souviens. Take sections of lanes when it’s too congested elsewhere, as much as possible avoid the cobblestone rue Saint-Paul — it wrecks hooves — be careful you don’t get stuck at a red light on the Bonaventure hill and if it’s about to happen, go at a trot or even a gallop, spare your horse. The stands in front of the Basilica and at the bottom of Place Jacques-Cartier are the territory of the experienced drivers; until you know how to back up, avoid them and keep a low profile. If a tourist gets on your nerves, make him get out, exactly like Alice did with you. Remember there’s just one master on a calèche: the driver. Watch out for trucks carrying a revolving barrel of cement; some horses, sure that the barrel is going to roll over them, will bolt when the trucks come their way. Don’t put your cash in the rear trunk when Le Rôdeur is guarding your calèche, and when you’re trying to attract tourists the action happens between your horse’s nose and the trunk of the calèche. Stay within the limits of your territory — like a hooker. Stay away from La Mouche. At any rate, you aren’t the kind of girl who borrows cash from a loan shark…. Change your horse’s diaper as soon as there’s manure in it, otherwise you’ll have flies and the drivers will lash out at you. To say nothing about the local residents who hate us nearly as much as taxi drivers. Your place here, you have to earn it. You don’t have to report to Billy. If his calèche and his horse come back intact, if you manage to get some customers into your calèche and bring money back to the stable, he’ll leave you alone. It’s the drivers that rule the place among themselves. In other words, if you don’t work out, you’ll know pretty fast. One last thing: at the end of the day keep your whip nearby, like I taught you. A driver comes back to the stable with full pockets, word gets around.”

  Marie watches John’s lips, lips that say important things she won’t hear again except in the background. They don’t belong to the same world. John is a good ten years older than she is, but something about him intrigues her. It must be the mentor’s self-confidence, his manners, at once gruff and tender, the heat, the leather, the air dusted with gold and the mirages breathed in Griffintown. John, who initially didn’t want to coach the new driver, is surprised to find himself trying to protect Marie, to be afraid for her. She’s pretty, that’s obvious. Desirable, even, but too young, too lovely, too shrewd for him. He’s a cowboy, a man who dislodges wood shavings from between his toes every night when he takes off his socks. At the end of summer, or before, the girl will go back to her world about which he knows nothing, she won’t last long in Griffintown; her time in the Far Ouest is probably just a passing fancy. And there’s something childish about her that sets his teeth on edge. Marie spends her time bumming smokes from him and asking uncalled-for questions: Why does Evan have tears tattooed on his cheeks? Why did you leave the halter under Poney’s bridle? What ratio of oats in his feed? What language does Lloyd speak? She doesn’t know about Paul Despatie or she wouldn’t have left him for a second. At the end of the day John can’t wait for her to get back on her bike and take off so he can admire her ass, then finally have some peace. And the worst is that in the evening when he sits at a table in the Saloon over a glass of horse piss, his thoughts fly away to Marie.

  Soon, though, all that will be over. She’ll learn to fly with her own wings, they’ll occupy different stands. She will go to the top of Place Jacques-Cartier with the new drivers, he to the very bottom with the regular visitors; they will meet now and then, by chance, say “Hello” …. John hopes she knows how to sort things out, but when he sees her tighten recklessly the reins between her knees long enough to fix her chignon when her horse is still moving, he doubts it.

  Going back to the stable, Poney raises his upper lip and emits a brief, shrill whinny by way of a greeting to Marilyn, a new mare Joe has just unhitched. When Poney senses a female presence in the stable, he’s immediately drawn by her exciting scent that stands out in the mustiness. He would like to be next to her in the line of stalls, but Rambo has slipped in between them. That bothers Poney so much that he kicks the stretch of wall separating him from his neighbour. He flattens his ears, then regains his self-control; he’ll have all summer to be close to her, to get drunk on her enticing secretions. Marilyn is standing unharnessed, covered with lather, incredibly blond. When he passes behind the mare, Poney makes the most of it to inhale the flower between her hindquarters.

  * * *

  AFTER UNHITCHING HER HORSE, Marie gets on her bike and rides away from the tin castle, smiling when she thinks of the look on Poney’s face and on Rambo’s and Marilyn’s when they see the treat she’s prepared for them in the stall: on a cube of hay she had set sections of apple and chunks of a big crisp carrot, a dozen pink peppermints, tossed a handful of oats and mixed in some good, sticky molasses.

  Heading east, she drives past the old city to watch the evening coachmen she doesn’t know so well. In front of the Basilica one of them, decked out in a derby hat and the kind of glasses with a mesh design made famous by Kanye West a few years ago, is hitched to a light caleche and a race horse wearing a top hat and dark glasses too.

  Alice is there, looking for something, a light for his cigarette probably. A driver holds out a lighter; he seems calmer now. Then a horse attracts Marie’s attention: thickset, with the proportions of a small buffalo; an incredible coat, between maiden’s blush rose and butterscotch macaroon, a speckled vacillation that spreads to his whole body; his nostrils and mouth are white, a detail that cracks her up; she stops for a moment to touch him.

  Past Berri Street, real, predictable, odourless. Crossing the border at the east she feels as if she’s falling off a cliff. In her head still dances the memory of the unusual horse she just met. The details of her new life as a calèche driver fill her thoughts: the carton of molasses that leaked all over her backpack; her bicycle tires that need air; the examination on driving the calèche that’s coming soon; John’s voice when he lavishes advice. John, whom she is anxious not to let down. Outside the limits of Griffintown, time seems to have stopped.

  * * *

  CHAMPION WAS THE COMPANION of Mignonne, an immaculate, mythical Pegasus who watches over the horses and haunts Alice still. The old gelding, one of the few horses in the stable to have trotted in the city during the Golden Age of the calèche, is starting on what will probably be his last season. For two or three years now, he has been shuffling his feet, which the experienced drivers can’t stand. At the very least, Champion must be allowed twenty minutes more than any other horse to get to the tourist area. At times Paul comes in the pickup truck to take him back to the stand and spare both the animal’s and the driver’s patience. He has to be spared and that’s why Billy has decided that Champion will spend the summer being crammed with apples by Marie, like a doting grandpa entrusted to the care of a pretty nurse.

  Reserved for veterans like Champion is the box stall at the very back of the aisle, with a window looking out on the stream, a lot more spacious and airy than the usual stall. It is the greatest privilege granted to the old horses.

  * * *

  "COME HERE," SAYS BILLY to Marie, leading her to the box stall. “There’s a horse I want you to meet.”

  She inspects Champion closely, gliding her hand over the horse to study his temperament and let h
im smell her. Some bruising on the withers; old scars on the croup (Marie knows what salve to use to restore smooth hair to the man-handled hide), some swelling in the right forefoot that nothing but a good hydrotherapy session will reduce, then she’ll see if he needs to be bandaged; the hair at the top of the tangled tail (did he get his worm powder last spring?); the drab coat, probably the accumulation of all that dust. She gives him a long shower and the grey water delivers a handsome, gilded chestnut creature that Marie dries gently. She untangles his mane, drips a bit of shampoo onto his tail, slowly massages his oversize shoulder, braids his hair, then ties onto several locks a flower of butter-and-eggs. The final touch: Vaseline to soften the gelding’s chapped lips.

  “Is that Champion?” asks Billy, incredulous, as he trundles past her with a wheelbarrow full of soiled straw.

  He knows he’s made the right decision. Marie is giving herself a treat and the old horse will be pampered all summer. The person who keeps the tin castle going has to find the best combination of horse-driver-calèche, a puzzle that is complex and sometimes risky. Billy gazes now at the small wooden calèche, the oldest one, which is light and painted black.

  “Get ready, Kid. We’re going to hitch up Champion and that’ll be your examination.”

  “For the permit, right away like that? Do you evaluate me?”

  “You got it. That’s how we do things here.”

  Tracing figure eights by zigzagging between two traffic cones for five minutes without hitting them, on a deserted blind alley not far from a sticky stream, and that’s the driving exam.