Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  “… I’m afraid of what might happen.”

  She’d had a tough life, growing up with her mother in Quebec City. If it wasn’t alcohol it was hard drugs, and now her mom was back in a rehab again. Which was why Jessie had made up her mind to come back to the Côte-Nord for a while. It would be better to live with her dad, she figured, than end up in a group home.

  I’d lost my mom when I was just a kid, so I could feel a lot of empathy for Jessie when she talked about her past. I managed to blurt out a few comforting words, nothing brilliant, and I promised her that everything was going to work out. Even if I couldn’t explain how.

  She smiled sweetly at me. I wanted to kiss her and tell her I liked her. But then, all of a sudden, she stood up. She thanked me and said she had to be going. Then awkwardly headed out the door without a backward glance, leaving me wondering what I’d done wrong. But I hadn’t even made a move on her. Soon enough, Sylvie showed up with a Dollarama shopping bag in hand. She showed me the tablecloth she had bought to cover the cracked melamine on the kitchen table.

  “Who was that ?”

  “Umm… a girl.”

  “A girlfriend, eh,” she said, winking at me.

  From me, nothing.

  I’m actually pretty good with crutches. I got down the hospital steps hopping on one foot, then swung myself across the crosswalk in three giant strides. Out in the parking lot, navigating between cars, I could cover a lot of ground. Sylvie was behind me, getting all worked up and hollering at me to be careful.

  To be honest, I have to admit I was hurting, plus it wasn’t so easy to squeeze into my aunt’s little Toyota.

  The long drive home from the hospital in Baie-Comeau wasn’t my idea of a good time. Not like I was worried about the 138, which we took every day. It’s just that Sylvie is a woman who really likes to talk a lot about anything and everything. And if you didn’t have some reason, real or imagined, to be somewhere else, you’d be in for hours of listening to her.

  And when you got to the point where you couldn’t take it anymore, all you could do was quietly slip away, forget the reasons or explanations. Unless you’re like my father, who’s an expert in faking sleep.

  “Has he been asleep for a long time ?” Sylvia had asked me, last spring it was. We had just returned from a gathering expedition.

  I shrugged, keeping my eyes glued to the TV, fingers crossed hoping she wasn’t going to treat me to a discussion of the new mushroom patch she’d uncovered upstream from Lake Whatsits. My father, slumped on the big green couch, was pounding it away while the Canadiens nursed a 2-1 lead over the Bruins eight minutes into the third period. Yeah, right. Even Sylvie had a hard time believing that, rolling her eyes as she went off to bed.

  “She’s beginning to clue in, I think,” I told my father. “I don’t think it’s working anymore, your little act.”

  “Did she say anything about it ?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s still working.”

  And he pumped his fist. A goal for Subban. Montreal was up, 3-1.

  My aunt is a seamstress at a Betty Brite in the mall. She hems workpants and replaces broken zippers. Besides that she runs a gathering business, selling mushrooms and berries to restaurants on the Côte-Nord and in Quebec City. But what sells best are the savory herbs she picks along the shore. The little business was rolling so well that she offered me a job, and so I worked for her all summer. Even if strawberries and raspberries can get a little boring, I must admit that I like picking herbs in September. I take Sylvie behind me on the quad and we head off down the big sandy beach. When she taps me on the shoulder, it means she’s found a good spot. We put on our rubber boots and spend the day filling our pails. I love the river ; it’s like the sea, with the wind and the sound of the waves. Sometimes, when Sylvie moves off in the distance, out of sight and caught up in her work, I lie down on the sand and daydream, looking out over the water. I could watch the clouds fly by for hours, especially when sky and water merge and you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.

  Highway 138 rolled by under the wheels of the little car, while my aunt dodged the astronomical number of potholes that pit the pavement. Then we got stuck behind an 18-wheeler loaded with logs. Normally that was all Sylvie needed to get cranked up over the pulp and paper companies that were clear-cutting the forests. She’d go on and on with the same rant she’d been repeating ever since I was old enough to toss in my two cents worth. But, to my surprise, she didn’t say much after we left the hospital. Including not a word about the rape of the boreal forest.

  I looked at her ; she had both hands on the steering wheel and a serious expression on her face.

  “What do the police want ?” I asked.

  “To ask you some questions about the accident.”

  “What is there to talk about, it was an accident.”

  “They want to know if Robert Pinchault was drinking.”

  After the old Chrysler had gone off the road, Mr. Pinchault had hurried over to a neighbour’s, Jean St-Pierre, to get help. I was unconscious, and the cut on my forehead was bleeding pretty badly. The two of them carried me to Jean’s car. Jean wanted to take Robert Pinchault to the hospital too, but no matter what St-Pierre said, he just wanted to go home.

  They made me wait a bit at the police station before directing me to a small office whose occupant was a big chap named Gagnon. He had a round red face and wore a shirt that was too small for him ; the buttons over his stomach seemed about to pop. As usually happens in these parts, we already knew each other.

  “That’s pretty bad luck, with the season just getting underway.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Maxime tells me you’re leading the league in scoring.”

  I shrugged again. What good was it to be the leading scorer if your team loses all its games, I felt like asking him. But I decided to keep my mouth shut. He perched his glasses on the tip of his nose and typed something into his computer.

  “Can you remember if Robert Pinchault had been drinking ?” he asked.

  “ No.”

  “Did he have alcohol on his breath ?”

  “No.”

  “When you were at his place… did you see any open beer bottles or anything that would suggest he had been drinking ?”

  “No.”

  He frowned, joining his hands on top of his desk.

  “What I don’t get is that Jean St-Pierre’s testimony seems to suggest the exact opposite.”

  Once again, I shrugged.

  “So how did the accident happen ?”

  “There was a moose on the road.”

  Chapter Two

  No sooner did we get home than I had my head in the fridge and four slices of cheese in my hand, ready to cook up a couple of grilled-cheese sandwiches. I was waiting for the cast iron frying pan to heat up when I heard my father’s big red pick-up roll up the driveway and come to a stop on the gravel. Through the kitchen window I could see the cloud of dust. I looked up at the ceiling.

  As soon as I heard the truck door slam shut, I knew my sandwiches would have to wait. I turned off the stove and leaned against the counter, hands in my pockets.

  The house shook as his heavy hunting boots thudded up the steps. He opened the front door and slammed it shut, yelling at the top of his deep voice :

  “ALEX !”

  Louis McKenzie is one big dude : six feet four, more than two hundred and fifty pounds. He’s a hunter, a guy who loves to eat wild game and he’s been working for the logging Company since he was fifteen. Most of the time he’s quiet and easy-going, but sometimes he can really blow his stack.

  When he saw me in the kitchen, he looked me over sheepishly. Then, with an awkward but touching gesture, he walked over and hugged me. Sure he meant it, but I knew him too well. It wouldn’t last.

  He took off his orange hat and let his grey-streaked hair tumble down his back. My father is an Innu. A man who’s pr
oud of his roots. He’s always worn his hair long and likes to tie it with leather strips. When people tried to get under his skin he always maintained his dignity. Not to mention that, six feet four inches and two hundred and fifty pounds can produce a certain level of respect in other people.

  He looked at my ankle and I answered his questioning glance.

  “It’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back on the ice.” He cursed and punched the wall with his big fist. Sylvie yelled out his name from her bedroom, upstairs.

  My father has spent all his life in the bush. Born into a desperately poor family, he quit school young and went to work for a logging company when he was fifteen. He got his foot mangled by a machine and after that, he became a foreman for a mill subsidiary that marked trees for cutting. Later on, the Company shut down the subsidiary and hired the guys back as subcontractors. That’s one way to cut costs. For my father, who was always hungry for freedom, it was an acceptable solution. Did he really have any choice ? There was only one employer in the whole area : the logging Company.

  He always dreamed of a better future for me. My natural talent for hockey had always brought him a lot of hope. That’s why my ankle injury had kind of morphed into “his” ankle injury, the one that had turned him into a cripple who walked with a limp and made him grimace with pain whenever the weather was damp and grey. That had to be the reason he punched the kitchen wall.

  “What in the world were you thinking, going off with that drunkard ?”

  “He wasn’t drunk. It was a moose.”

  “A moose ?”

  “There was a bull in the middle of the road and we went in the ditch.”

  “In the middle of hunting season ? The whole North Shore is crawling with hunters. Guns are going off all over the place, and you, you see a moose right on 3rd Side Road ?”

  “Un-huh.”

  “For two weeks I’m perched in my hideout, three hundred miles away from here, and you’re telling me that all I really have to do is to ‘park’ right beside the tracks ?”

  “I guess so.”

  My father, shaking his head from left to right, went to the fridge and poured himself a tall glass of Pepsi and sat down at the table. He was still steaming, tapping his index finger on the shiny melamine. I could tell it was going to be a while before I’d be able to eat my grilled-cheese sandwiches.

  “Mike said that he just left you on the road.”

  “He didn’t just leave me, Papa. He left me with St-Pierre who drove me to the hospital. He wasn’t feeling good and just wanted to go home”

  “To sober up.”

  “He wasn’t drunk.”

  “I’m going to go over to Pinchault’s, and I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.” He smacked the table with his empty glass, got up, and put on his hat. I told him not to do it, that it wasn’t worth it, that Robert Pinchault was down and out, nothing more. Mind your own business, he told me.

  I followed him outside. Three 45-footers passed by on the 138, one right after the other, the Jake brakes making an earsplitting racket. I grabbed my father’s arm to hold him back. We were a sight to see, him with his mangled foot and me with my sprained ankle. He looked at my hand on his arm, and then gave me a withering look. I let go. He told me to get back inside. Leaning on my crutch, I told him right to his face :

  “You promised that the Company would never cut the trees up at the lake !”

  “What lake ? What are you talking about ?”

  “You know damn well what lake I’m talking about. Your lake. I was up there yesterday. They’ve cut right down to it. There’s no more spruce on the north shore.”

  “The government decided to sell off the land. There was no choice, we knew it was going to happen.”

  “And your inheritance ? Your beaver traps ? Your natau-assi… I guess that’s no big deal,” I added.

  And at that, he turned red as a beet ; I knew then I’d pushed him too far. I took a couple of steps back onto the porch, ready to escape into the house on my crutches, convinced he was about to give it to me good. But he turned on his heels and climbed into his pickup. Fuming, he spun the wheels in the gravel before squealing onto the highway like a madman, the passing cars honking and jamming on the brakes to make way for him.

  Sylvie came to see what was happening. She put her hand on my shoulder. Now it was my turn to fume. I was grinding my jaws like I wanted a mouthful of broken teeth.

  “Are you going to be alright ?” she asked me.

  “He wants to make Pinchault pay… the jerk.”

  “Look,” she said. “You know your father can fly off the handle. He’s probably going to stop off at one of his pals’, have a beer and calm down. Louis isn’t much of a fighter, you know that.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  But Sylvie didn’t know what I’d told him about all the clear-cutting, my father’s beaver traps and his family inheritance. I had touched something so deep down in his heart, something so painful to do with his heritage and all the contradictions he’d gone through as a foreman for a paper company, that he’d jumped into his pickup and headed up 3rd Side Road to kick the shit out of Robert Pinchault. After he left, I finally ate my grilled-cheese sandwiches and fell asleep on the old green couch. It was dark when I finally woke up. All the lights were out and it was quiet upstairs. I lay there a long time, arms crossed behind my head, looking at the ceiling and listening to the trucks rolling down the highway and rattling the house. One thing was bothering me : my quad. I dressed warmly and started down the 138 on my crutches.

  Cars and trucks whipped by me on the shiny black pavement. The wind was blowing hard off the open water and I had to lean into my crutches to avoid being blown backwards. A few cars stopped ; people from the village, and some acquaintances, asked if they could give me a lift. I was just out for a walk, I told them, that was it. I kept on until I reached town and the Rue du Quai. Turning at the red light, I arrived at Michel’s.

  Mike, my mechanic, is a family friend. He was the first person Sylvie had phoned when I had my accident. And it was Mike who hit the road at three in the morning to go get my father up at his hunting lodge. He’s a little strange, a solitary guy who gets along better with engines and bodywork than with people. He’s tall and thin, with long blond hair that’s turning grey. He always wears a Maple Leafs hat and a vest with a logo from some old heavy metal band like Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden.

  When I got to his shop, I saw that all the lights were on, which was no surprise. Mike is the kind of guy who never sleeps. Whether you stop in at six in the morning or at midnight, he’s always in his garage working. He lives in a little house set back from the main drag. It’s at the back of the yard, behind a children’s clothing store and next to a woodworking shop. The house isn’t much more than a shed. I think there’s just one room on the ground floor and one room upstairs. And as far as I know, he’s never there. Just to sleep, and that’s it. He even eats out all the time, at Chez Lisette.

  I knew my hunch was good when I saw my Suzuki parked in the yard behind the workshop, just up the street from the wharf. The place was jammed full of engines and vehicles of every description. I came up to the fence and Nuliaq started barking as loud as she could. After sniffing my hand, she calmed down enough to be able to stick her nose though the chain link fence and lick me enthusiastically. Nuliaq is a husky, over thirty years old. Whatever she came down with, it had almost completely blinded her.

  After a couple of minutes of fooling around with the old husky, I went into Michel’s workshop, a big double garage with a 15-foot high ceiling. Tools were piled everywhere you look, on workbenches, lining the walls and lying on the floor too. Jacks, soldering irons, metal benders, everything. You name it, think of a tool, any tool : for sure Mike will find it somewhere in all that mess.

  He was lying underneath a formula one style racing skidoo propped up on hydraulic jacks. He slid out on his creeper and waved hello, then got up, grabbed his Leafs hat from the seat of the
skidoo and put it on his blond head. He had lost some weight. His face was long and gaunt.

  “I knew it was you,” he said.

  “Why’s that ?”

  “Nuliaq usually won’t stop yapping until I come outside.”

  “How come she’s outside ?”

  “She’s shedding,” he said, pointing to a clump of fur mixed in with some used motor oil in the corner. “It’s gross ! It’s all over the place. She’s gone senile. She’ll bark for hours at a tractor tire.”

  He opened the door ; Nuliaq came in and lay down in her corner, imagining she’d better be good and obey if she wanted to stay inside. Poor mutt. How could she know that it was because she would shed a ton of hair twice a year that she ended up in quarantine ?

  I leaned up against a sawhorse while Michel put away his tools. I couldn’t help noticing the new Stihl calendar with Miss October dressed in a pink bathing suit and straddling a tree trunk, holding a big chainsaw.

  “Did your father tell you it was me who brought in your quad ?”

  “No, but I guessed it anyway.”

  “Know what this is ?” he said, tossing me a spark plug.

  I didn’t answer, tapping the object with the tip of my finger. The electrodes that ignited the gasoline vapour in the cylinder were completely burnt out. The way he was looking at me, I couldn’t tell if Mike was going to give me a lecture or burst out laughing. I shrugged my shoulders ; he was right. I should have checked the plugs. There was no excuse for not carrying a spare. Besides that, I should never have gone into the bush without a survival kit : first aid, matches, water, blanket and flashlight with fresh batteries. And definitely, spare parts and some tools. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never be that disciplined, and Michel will always be giving me that look.

  He flicked a switch and the big floodlights that lighted the yard went on. We went outside and found ourselves immediately on the biggest playground you could ever imagine. For a mechanic like Mike, that is.

  You could find anything and everything in his junkyard, as he referred to it. Old cars, boats, motors, tractors, you name it. If you think he likes tinkering with skidoos and motorcycles in his free time, his real baby was sheltered up against the side of the garage : an awesome dune buggy he had been working on forever. He’d gone over it from top to bottom. It was purple with flames painted on both sides. During summer, “The Mike” can be seen rolling at top speed down our beaches that stretch forever.