The Years of Fire

by Yves Beauchemin

  “What is it, young man?”

  “Do you know where I can find Charles?” the boy repeated.

  “He doesn’t work here today. I have no idea where he is.”

  “That’s what I just told him,” said Rose-Alma.

  “Why?” Lalancette addressed the young man. “What’s happened?”

  “Something serious with his family,” was all Steve Lachapelle would say. He turned and ran out of the pharmacy.

  Lalancette went out onto the sidewalk and looked after him. The young man didn’t seem to know where to go. Something serious must have happened indeed. But what could it have been?

  “Hey!” he called. “Come back!”

  But the young man didn’t even turn his head. It was as though he didn’t want to speak to the pharmacist.

  Suddenly Lalancette spun on his heels, his mouth hanging open. Rose-Alma looked at him in alarm. He had just put his finger on what it was that had been clawing at him earlier, getting in the way of the full enjoyment of his long labours. It was Charles. Certainly he was the most resourceful, the most conscientious, the most agreeable delivery boy he had had since he’d gone into business. There was no denying the fact. But the boy had changed lately. It had taken the pharmacist this long to realize it because the change had announced itself only in small, almost imperceptible ways. His good humour had become slightly tarnished, his look furtive. He had moments of absent-mindedness, and at time flashes of sadness crossed his face, which he would dispel with a brisk shake of his head.

  Something was going on with Charles that was making him unhappy. No doubt the arrival of this dishevelled young man had to do with whatever it was. Perhaps it even had something to do with Lalancette, or else why would the young man have refused to tell him about it? But what could it be?

  All this flashed through his mind as he stood in the doorway, to the increasing astonishment of his cashier. A tall, extremely thin man, barely able to hold himself upright with the aid of a cane, was trying to squeeze himself in and was vexed at not being able to get past the massive body of the pharmacist.

  “Someone’s trying to get in, Monsieur Lalancette,” Rose-Alma finally said.

  Lalancette stood aside and excused himself. The tall man handed him a prescription and launched into a long, flowing litany of his multiple ailments. Other customers entered. Lalancette became busy behind the counter, filling tubes and bottles, deciphering prescriptions, writing out directions and dosages, assailed by questions, forcing himself to reply to each one as clearly and succinctly as possible, and doing his utmost to maintain a reserve of patience.

  As soon as the rush was over he hurried into a room at the back of the shop in which his employees took their lunch and coffee breaks. It was furnished with a microwave oven, a table and several chairs, and three lockers for their personal effects. He opened the locker on the left and took out the rough, cotton backpack that Charles normally used when making his deliveries. He shoved his hand into the bag, removed it quickly and, with a look of surprise coming over his forlorn features, examined the tips of his fingers.

  Charles and Blonblon were rushing towards the Papineau metro station. Charles was telling his friend about his meeting with his father. His face was pale, his features sagged as though from the effects of deep fatigue, and his voice was an octave higher than usual.

  “What is it you want from me?” the carpenter had growled after glancing at the door to make sure Blonblon couldn’t hear him. A fierce scowl jerked his mouth into a crooked line. “You come to give me some more dough? Or to break my wrist again? Or both, maybe, eh?”

  “I broke your wrist?” asked Charles, surprised and embarrassed.

  “As good as! Couldn’t work for two weeks after that.… You’re lucky I didn’t grab you, you little bugger, I’d’ve shaken you like you never been shook before!”

  Charles watched him without replying. Leaning on the corner of the table, his half-unbuttoned shirt revealing an abundance of robust, black chest hairs that somehow belied the thinness of his scrawny chest and neck, the carpenter took short, nervous puffs of his cigarette and stared at his son without expression. The adolescent decided there was no point beating around the bush; better to come right out with it, make it as brutal as possible.

  “I know it was you who set fire to the hardware store two months ago.”

  Thibodeau laughed. His only other response was to shrug his shoulders and go to the refrigerator, take out a beer, and, without bothering to offer one to Charles, tip it back and take a long drink. When he was done he turned to Charles.

  “Oh yeah? You don’t say.”

  Charles paled and stared at him in silence.

  “Is that why you came here? To tell me that?” Thibodeau said mockingly.

  “I came to tell you to leave Fernand alone,” Charles said, his voice shot through with barely controlled anger. “He’s sick. He hardly goes to work any more. What good will it do you if he loses his business?”

  Thibodeau took another guzzle of beer, sat down squarely on the table, his legs dangling over the edge, and looked at his son. He seemed infinitely pleased with the turn the conversation had taken.

  “Listen to me, my boy. I’m going to tell you two things. First: somewhere around the beginning of June the police came here to question me about that bloody fire. They were here for three hours trying to get me to talk. They thought I’d hang myself with my own rope, but I goddamn well never told them nothing. They couldn’t prove nothing against me because they didn’t have squat, know what I mean? They couldn’t prove I did it because I never had nothing to do with that business. You got that? So if you ever come around here again, find yourself another song, okay? That one goes in one ear and out the other.”

  Charles tried to say something but Thibodeau cut him off with a gesture.

  “And the second thing I want to say is this,” he went on. “You’re wasting your breath trying to get me to feel sorry for Fernand Fafard. After the way he treated me the last time I saw him, I couldn’t give a sweet goddamn if he lost his hardware store, his wife, and his kids to boot! You got that, too? So don’t come here talking to me about Fernand Fafard either.”

  Thibodeau’s tone had become threatening. Charles continued to watch him in silence, amazed to realize how unimpressed he was now by this dry, little man with the ravaged face and the fierce eyes. Was it because he knew Blonblon was just outside the door? But there wasn’t much Blonblon could do, was there, other than be a witness after the fact. No, the reason was simple: since he’d moved into the Fafards’ house, he had grown and his father had shrunk, diminished in every possible way. He had become transformed into a kind of hairy spider. He had made himself a fine web, it was true, but he could still be crushed underfoot. All Charles had to do to protect himself was keep his eye on him.

  “All right, Papa, that’s all very well, but we still have to talk about him, because that’s the reason I came here.”

  His father gave him a long look, then sighed deeply and lit a cigarette.

  “How much will it take for you to leave Fernand in peace?” Charles asked him.

  “Nothing at all. Because I’m already leaving him in peace.”

  “Come on, Papa, no more fooling around. You’re wasting my time. I came here to make you an offer. I’ve got money.”

  “Yeah, I saw that the last time you came here,” Thibodeau snorted. “Where do you get it all?”

  “That’s my business.”

  A hideous expression of distrust and greed came over Thibodeau’s face. He took another gulp of beer, rolled it thoughtfully around in his mouth before swallowing, then inhaled a long drag from the cigarette that was balanced lightly between his fingers. He exhaled in two long jets from his nostrils.

  “How do I know this ain’t a trap, eh?” he said finally, in a cocky manner.

  Charles shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “I’m not asking you to tell me about your life. I’m asking
you how much you want.”

  “Right. And if I give you a number, you don’t think later on you might take that for some kind of confession …?”

  “Listen, Papa, if there’s no way we can talk to each other, then I might as well leave. I can easily find some other way to help Fernand.”

  This remark seemed to cast Thibodeau into deep reflection. Leaning with both hands on the edge of the table, cigarette jutting from the middle of his mouth – a pucker of purplish flesh that made him look grotesque – he stared at the floor through billows of blue smoke. Charles had slid his hand into his pocket and was fingering his own pack of cigarettes, but he didn’t bring them out. He balked at the idea of smoking with his father.

  Thibodeau raised his head suddenly.

  “So you’re all grown up, eh, Charlie, my boy? You and I can have some serious conversations now, I guess …”

  If Charles were looking for a warning, he would have found it in the softened tones of his father’s voice, a voice filled with a dangerous languor, and in the honeyed smile that tried without success to soften the features of his shrunken face, formed as it had been by more brutal passions.

  “So how much do you want?” Charles repeated quietly.

  “Depends on how much you got.”

  “I have the money. And I can get more.”

  “Oh-ho! Who you working for these days, the Bank of Canada?”

  “Come on, Papa. I’m in a hurry.”

  “If I mention a figure,” Thibodeau said with the wiles of an old cat, “you understand it has nothing to do with any fire at the hardware store. We’re agreed about that, right?”

  “Yes, we’re agreed about everything.”

  The carpenter maintained his silence for another moment, uncertain about his next move, and apparently spellbound by the incredible luck that had befallen him.

  “Give me two thousand,” he murmured at last, “and you’ll never hear from me again.”

  “I can’t give you that all at once.”

  “I’d be surprised if you could.”

  “I can give you four hundred a month. Some months maybe a bit less.”

  “Understood. Can you let me have some now?”

  “No, I didn’t bring any money with me. I’ll come back tonight.”

  Thibodeau took a last drag on his cigarette and crushed the butt in a saucer. Then he gave his son a small salute. Charles was about to open the door when a sinister idea stopped him. He turned around and pointed a menacing finger at his father.

  “Don’t mess with me, you got that? If anything ever happens to the hardware store, I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure you pay for it a hundred times over!”

  The next thing that happened was so quick that he had trouble reconstructing it in his own mind, let alone for Blonblon. He felt a saucer whistle past his cheek and smash against the wall. A shard from it struck him on the neck, drawing blood.

  The carpenter didn’t move, as though even he was astonished at what he had done. Then a thin smile appeared on his lips.

  “Nobody talks to me like that. It gets on my nerves, see? If I’d wanted to I could have sliced your face wide open. Next time, kid, keep a decent tongue in your head.”

  12

  Charles was opening the gate to his front yard when Monsieur Victoire ran across the street to tell him that Fernand had just been taken to the hospital. He wouldn’t say anything more. Charles ran into the house. Céline was mopping the bathroom floor and crying, and Henri, on his knees in the living room and moving with the slowness of a sleepwalker, was trying to wipe spots off the rug with a sponge. Lucie had gone with her husband to the hospital. When he saw the bathroom sink smeared with blood, Charles gave a cry of horror. He ran into the kitchen and threw up into the sink.

  “He just lost his head,” Henri said, speaking quietly, when Charles emerged from the kitchen. “It didn’t last long. As soon as he realized what he’d done he made a sort of tourniquet and called for help. But he’d already lost a lot of blood …”

  Céline was sobbing in her room, lying across her bed. Charles went in to see her. He sat beside her and stroked her hair.

  “Oh, Charles, he could have died! Just think. And for nothing! The medics in the ambulance barely got here in time!”

  No, it wasn’t for nothing, Charles thought, shaking his head. It was because of my father. When my father finds out what’s happened he’ll wet his pants with glee, the bastard.

  “He must be so sad! What could we have done to help him? Do you know, Charles?”

  Yes, I do know, Charles thought. I’ve already taken steps. And I’ll see it through to the end. As much as it takes, Wilfrid. And if I have to throw you into the river to stop you, that’s what I’ll do.

  He bent his head over her and put his cheek against hers.

  “The doctors are looking after him,” he said. “Everything will be all right. And I’m going to help him. There’ll be no more trouble, I promise.”

  Céline turned and held him in her arms, shuddering, and her tears ran down Charles’s cheeks.

  “I need you, Charles. I feel so alone. So small. I don’t know what to do any more. I’m afraid …”

  “No, no,” Charles said gently, troubled by her desolation and her loss of control. “You’re not alone. I’m here, right beside you.… And Lucie, she’s here, and Henri … and Monsieur Michaud. We’re all going to look after Fernand, you’ll see, and in a month or two he’ll be back at the hardware store, just like before …”

  “No, Charles,” she sobbed, “nothing will ever be like it was before.”

  He went on trying to console her, patiently, though he was as tortured by doubts and worries as she was.

  Henri watched them silently from the doorway, his arms by his sides. Their intimacy surprised him, and he felt strangely like lashing out with a sharp word.

  Charles could see Lucie sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed in the darkened room. She looked exhausted but calmly determined. She smiled up at him and motioned him to come closer.

  He entered the room and stood beside the bed.

  “Five minutes, no more,” she said in a low voice. “Doctor’s orders. He’s very tired. Henri is downstairs in the cafeteria. You can go down and join him if you want.”

  He nodded, then saw that Fernand was looking at him hazily. If Lucie hadn’t been there he might have doubted he was in the right room, so changed was the man lying before him. The Fernand he knew didn’t look anything like this man, with his hollow cheeks, his flaccid face, his curiously bony, prominent nose. He seemed to have been transformed into something sinister.

  Charles felt a constriction in his throat, and he had to wait before he could speak.

  “Hello, Fernand,” he finally managed.

  Fernand continued to look at him without seeming to have heard. He looked lost, as though he belonged to a different world.

  “Hello, Fernand,” Charles said again, after looking anxiously at Lucie.

  A moment passed.

  “Don’t talk to me,” Fernand said suddenly, his voice weak and hoarse.

  Stunned, Charles looked again at Lucie, who had stood up and placed her hand on her husband’s shoulder, looking down at him anxiously.

  “You don’t want me to … to speak to you?” Charles said with a painful frown of disbelief.

  “That’s what I said. Don’t talk to me,” Fernand repeated, more loudly this time. “I asked you not to talk to me.”

  Charles started to cry. The destruction of the Fernand he had known and loved was now complete. This man could die now, and nothing would change.

  Lucie had come around the bed to take the young man in her arms.

  “You can cry all you want,” Fernand murmured bitterly. “You’ll never cry enough.”

  And he turned his head away.

  Lucie took Charles out into the hall and tried to console him.

  “What did I do to him? What did I do to him?” he sobbed, his face pressed against her
large bosom.

  “Nothing, nothing, don’t be silly. You can see for yourself he’s not in his right mind. After what happened this morning, and all the drugs they’ve given him, he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s not making any sense at all.”

  Ashamed of his weakness, Charles leaned back and looked into her eyes.

  “He knows what he’s saying,” he said angrily. “And he’s right not to want me to talk to him. If it weren’t for me coming to live with you, none of this would have happened.”

  Lucie raised her hands in consternation and tried to respond, but Charles had already turned and was running down the hall, so lost in his own misery that he nearly knocked over a nurse carrying a tray of medications.

  Henri Lalancette looked at the tips of his fingers, which were covered with a white powder. He sniffed them, but couldn’t determine what it was. After frowning two or three times and uttering a few perplexed grunts, he cautiously touched his finger to the tip of his tongue. The substance tasted a bit sweet; maybe it was powdered sugar or something like that. But how would powdered sugar get in the bottom of his delivery boy’s backpack?

  He stood motionless before the open locker, the bag in his hand, somewhat ashamed of himself for resorting to subterfuge but still wracked by doubt, even though he could think of no good reason to be suspicious. He heard steps approaching. Quickly he slid the bag back into the locker and closed the door.

  For the rest of the day he was even more taciturn than usual, which was saying a lot! During the afternoon, Rose-Alma asked him in a motherly way if he was suffering from indigestion, which was sometimes the case with him. He replied coolly that his stomach was working perfectly, and concentrated on his work.

  But just before five, the need to confide in someone overcame his reticence, and after a few false starts he told his cashier about what he had found, and about the suspicions – so far baseless, he admitted – that the white powder had raised in his mind.

  Rose-Alma laughed.

  “Really, Monsieur Lalancette,” she said, “the ideas that get into your head sometimes! You must have watched too many movies on TV this week! I’ve been working behind a cash register for twenty-two years now, and I’ve seen a thing or two, but Charles? Involved in drug trafficking? You can’t be serious! He probably bought a box of doughnuts at the bakery, he sometimes does that, and some of the icing sugar got into the bottom of his bag. That’s all it will be …”