Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  Walking down the big hill that led to the port, I saw skidoo tracks going up and down the road. And I heard a two-stroke engine start up backfiring and then humming like a razor. Mike shot out of his yard like a rocket, his Maple Leafs hat on his head. He was riding his old green snowmobile, the Skiroule 440. He rode to the end of the dock and then pulled a U-ey and floored it. He must have seen me since he came right up to me. That’s when the engine went perfectly silent, and then stopped.

  Michel got down and walked with long strides some ways away, then came back, gesturing furiously, fake kicking his machine. He swore again when I caught up with him, hands in my pockets, nonchalant.

  “Hey, Mike ! What’s up ?”

  He looked at me, exasperated. He was really furious.

  “What’s going on ?” I asked.

  “I don’t get it, don’t get it, just don’t get it…. not a thing !”

  He went on ranting while he stomped the heels of his cowboy boots into the snow.

  Mike gives it one hundred percent. He’s the best mechanic you’d ever want to know. And one reason for that is he’s super patient and never loses his cool. The state his Skiroule 440 had put him wasn’t normal.

  I can’t tell you what an incredible job he’s done on that antique. Restored each and every part to the Wickham manufacturer’s original specs. Not only was the paint job, leather upholstery and all the cosmetic finishing impeccable — just like new — but he’d rebuilt the entire engine, carburetor, transmission too. He attacked the work with the same skill and passion as the guy who had originally built this amazing machine at the end of the sixties and who, with the help of his family, manufactured them for over fifteen years until the company was bought out by Coleman from the States.

  “It starts right up, every time,” said Michel. “It runs for five, ten minutes, then it stops and it won’t budge after that. Search me why !”

  “Gas line ?”

  “No way !”

  “There must be something there.”

  “Look, I’ve rebuilt everything, everything’s new, it gets gas fine, the carburetor’s perfect. Everything’s rebuilt, everything ! It can’t not work. It’s black magic, do you understand me ?”

  It had belonged to an old Indian from Ontario. He’d put a spell on it. There was no other explanation.

  Would he give up ? No chance. In spite of the thousand-year shamanic science that had cast an evil spell on that snowmobile, Michel was going to fix it, even if it took an entire lifetime.

  We pushed it into his garage, and lifted it up with two hydraulic jacks. Mike became absorbed with his tools and his tinkering while I silently watched him open the hood and take apart the carburetor. I looked at Nuliaq, who hadn’t even got up when we came in ; lying on his dirty old red pillow, under the workbench, it seemed as though she didn’t even know we were there.

  “Is that the air intake, under the handlebars ?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, without a pause in his work. “When I was your age, I had an old skidoo that was just the same. We were ripping down 3rd Side Road at full speed. Just before the little hill at the tracks, where you wrecked with good old Pinchault, we dumped in some ether. We took off like a friggin’ rocket.”

  He started laughing his head off, imitating the sound of a rocket, miming with his hands a spaceship. He lifted his cap and dried his eyes. I don’t remember seeing that guy ever laugh so hard.

  “Wicked.”

  “Yeah. I only did that three times. The last time, the head blew under the pressure.”

  “What did you do ?”

  “What do you think ? I replaced it.”

  And he went back to work while I squatted down close to the workbench, extending my hand to old Nuliaq, who sniffed it and then licked me. Her grey and black fur was all ratty and she smelled bad.

  It was Michel who caught me by surprise, even though I had come exactly for that reason. And I stood up and turned around, just like a kid who had gotten caught. He never lifted his head out of the skidoo’s engine.

  “How’s Sylvie ?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She’s got a new boyfriend ?”

  “Ah… I didn’t know that.”

  “I saw her last night with some guy coming out of the movies in Baie-Comeau.”

  I pretended not to know anything about it. No need to mention that my aunt was all excited and that she had got her hair done, got all made up before going out. He’d seen her and he already knew about it. He’d been hanging with her for a lot of years. That’s when I realized why he was so angry, not to mention his machine not working.

  For him, fixing machines was sort of like trout fishing I figured. If his Skiroule didn’t work, maybe it was because he was bothered and the engine sensed it. But I was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear anything like that.

  “I know why it doesn’t work, the skidoo.”

  “Why ?” he asked.

  “It’s your Maple Leafs hat… If you were wearing a Habs hat, no problem.”

  He threw a roll of electric tape at my head.

  The next day, Sunday, it took me over an hour on the phone to bug Samuel into wanting to go get the Yamaha at Colombier. The snow really wasn’t deep enough, his father wasn’t keen, he didn’t know if the oil had been changed, etc. He trotted out every excuse in the book and I shot them down one after the other saying that thirty centimetres had fallen just since yesterday and that I’d change the oil myself.

  The last excuse was that he was afraid of the cold, that he was worried he’d get sick and miss tomorrow night’s game. Of course, that was just the sort of excuse I was waiting for. After calling him a little wuss, a first-grader, etc., a couple of hours later we were flying along on his father’s Bombardier Tundra, ripping along the Manicouagan trail through the forest at top speed. It was dangerous. A couple of times we came close to cracking up. In fact, I fell off the skidoo twice, but didn’t get hurt. On purpose, Sam whipped the skidoo back and forth like a maniac and I went tumbling through the snow right up to the trees. It was great.

  After a demented trip of two hours we reached Colombier. Samuel quieted down once we got there. His uncle Normand, who had a huge potbelly and a big grey moustache, seemed surprised to see us. He went out with us to the garage in T-shirt and slippers, in the snow.

  He had to strain to slide the big wooden door on its rail.

  “Skidoo season starts early this year, boys,” he yelled while starting the skidoo.

  He drove it around the yard, and then across the field to the tree line. Then I took a turn. Kneeling on the seat, I banked left and right to test the suspension and the steering. After a couple of sprints, I got off, satisfied. It was missing some punch, but it’d be perfect for the winter. (Better than walking up to the cabin.) I took out the three hundred dollars I’d robbed from my piggy bank and handed it to Normand.

  “How’re the trails, boys ?” he asked us while counting the money.

  “Perfect,” I said. “It snowed a ton up in the mountains. It’s pretty deep.”

  And I indicated the height of my hips with my hand.

  Samuel was tongue-tied and beat a hasty retreat, hoping his uncle wouldn’t see the damage we’d done to his dad’s Tundra. Fact was, there wasn’t enough snow on the trail and we had smacked into a big rock near Betsiamites River. The right ski was all bent. His uncle wanted to pursue the discussion, but I revved the engine so hard that we couldn’t hear a word he said. Sam jumped up on the Tundra and we were out of there like a couple of bandits, taking the upper trail fast as we could.

  Well, okay, it’s a heavy 250. Comfy, but not too fast. Samuel was really pushing me on the way home. He seemed permanently irritated and I think he was pissed because I had insisted on this whole outing in the first place. But it wasn’t me who’d been driving the damn machine. If he’d been watching where he was going, instead of trying to dump me, he wouldn’t have hit that rock.

  Finally, he gave a big wave of his han
d to let me know he was out of time and had to make a beeline for home. He disappeared into a stand of spruce leaving me behind in a cloud of mud and snow. I didn’t mind. I was happy to be alone rolling along on my new skidoo.

  The snow had stopped for the first time in two days. The sky had lifted and a little bit of blue was poking through the cottony clouds. The cold started to get to me. I went up and down the big trail that wound endlessly through lakes and mountains, passing through some breathtaking scenery. For miles and miles, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but lakes and trees. And once in a while, it could even make you dizzy. Like when you cross a bridge and realize there’s nothing underneath you, and you feel pulled towards the void. Here, it’s the endlessness of the forest that enchants you and tries to lure you in deeper. What might you find if you were to go a little bit further, just to the other side of this hill, or that mountain, or behind those two trees ? And even further than that ? I felt like just doing it, like taking an unmarked turn-off that led to nowhere.

  I left these rambling thoughts behind me with the blue exhaust of the two-stroke. Uncle Normand must have mixed too much oil with the gas. I’d have to check it out. The engine was making a weird noise and changing speed without me giving it any gas. Maybe there was something loose in the clutch. It was a whistling, strident sound that hurt your ears but that would stop with a sudden clack. That was going to be a job for Mike.

  I began to get a little bit worried. If the skidoo broke down, I’d have to walk and I wouldn’t get home before midnight. What bothered me the most was the cold, which was getting more and more intense as the day came to an end.

  But quickly, all my troubles seemed for naught when I spotted the giant tracks in the snow on the trail. I stopped to get off the skidoo and make sure. They were moose prints, all right. They pressed into the snow right down to the grass. I doubled back on the trail to see for how long I had been following the animal. Lost in thought, I must have been following it for a while, since I couldn’t tell where they first started. Yet, he couldn’t be far off, given the freshness of the tracks.

  I climbed back on the old Yamaha and kept going, nice and easy, expecting to see the moose at every turn of the trail. Finally, on a long marked curve I saw him, walking straight ahead, wagging his rear end from side to side, his huge antlers sticking out on each side of his head, covered with fir branches and snow.

  I slowly got closer to him. He didn’t seem bothered by me, or by my skidoo, as though he owned the trail and was saying, “Look, my good man, this is my home.” I followed behind my trail guide for a couple of long minutes until my clutch did its noisy thing and, this time, the moose bounded off into the woods.

  I jumped down to chase after him. But I didn’t get very far. To my deep disappointment, the bush was too thick. The branches seemed to reach out and catch my coat, I had to give it up. My father, the great hunter, had often explained to me how a moose is able to move through the thickest brambles : he walks forward looking backwards. It’s incredible that a creature that large can pass through spaces that you couldn’t even squeeze through.

  On the trunk of a large spruce, inside a long wedge in the bark, I found a tuft of the moose’s hair. I knew it was him, again. This time I knew it ; he was looking for me. I raised the tuft to my nose so I could catch his scent, then I got back on the trail, feet numbed by the cold.

  By the time I got to the end of the Manicouagan trail, it was almost dark. I took the service road at the pumping station up to 3rd Side Road. Only one cross-country skier had come this way, and the recent snowfall was unblemished. It was like a racetrack and I remembered Michel’s story about the ether in the engine and the jump at the railroad tracks.

  I began to slow down when I saw the Pinchaults’ house. I had made enough of a fool of myself already. I only had one thing in mind : to get past as quickly as possible and leave it behind me. There was light coming from the ground floor. The flickering white light of a television shone through the big front porch window. Suddenly, I noticed something strange and my hand stalled on the accelerator. A light was flashing on the second floor, maybe from a flashlight. It went on and then off with a pause of five seconds, then back on, like the fog light at the end of the dock.

  I hesitated for a second. Then, unable to resist, I jumped down and crossed the Pinchaults’ big field to the left of the house, with its mangy stand of pine, junk scattered everywhere, auto bodies, appliances, couches, mattresses and box springs, you name it.

  Without losing sight of the blinking light, I approached the house, as though hypnotized, following the luminous signal that repeated with clockwork precision. I was within a few feet of the house when it stopped. I completely froze, like in a dream, when you realize that you don’t know how you got where you are.

  The sky had cleared, leaving a practically full moon that made the fresh snow sparkle. It lit up the house surrealistically, highlighting the large flakes of white paint peeling off of the grey clapboard siding.

  The front door opened and I hid behind a withered old pine and a beat-up mouldy couch. Footsteps echoed on the old porch, which creaked as if it would collapse. For a moment there was a silence that is hard to describe, kind of like after a big snowfall, when the wind drops to stillness and the mercury heads south.

  Nervously, I fiddled with the wet and frozen foam spilling out of a torn pillow. Then I saw someone moving on the porch. I recognized Stéphane Pinchault from his spindly silhouette and his legs that were too long for his body. He was decked out in a black leather jacket, jeans and white running shoes that gleamed in the glare of the moon. He pulled out his flashlight and pointed it at me. I watched him, through the springs of the old sofa, sending out one long flash every five seconds. I held my breath as though deep-sea diving and came out from where I was hiding.

  He continued to signal me with his flashlight and as I headed towards the house, I stiffened my spine. I could hear Pinchault breathing, just a couple of metres away on the porch.

  “What do you want from me ?” I finally asked him.

  He didn’t respond right away. To my big surprise, he lit a cigarette with a click of a big Zippo. He took a long puff and slowly exhaled. The smoke hovered in the frozen air. No one said a word until the smoke had completely dissipated.

  “I was waiting for you,” he said, taking another drag.

  “What’s that about ? ‘You’ were waiting for me ?”

  “Every night, for about a month, I’ve been sending a coded message out towards the forest. I couldn’t see you. But I knew you were there, waiting for the right time. Tonight, the moon is full, and you’ve come. Now we can…”

  “The moon’s not full,” I hissed, annoyed. “It won’t be full for two more days.”

  He didn’t answer, as if it didn’t matter. And, it didn’t actually matter. Everything seemed like it was about to shift into an alternate reality, an unreal dimension. My heart was pounding.

  “Everything is all prepared up in the hayloft,” he said.

  “The hayloft ?”

  “In the old barn. Everything’s ready for the investiture, the passage.”

  The front door creaked on its hinges and I scooted under the porch.

  Through a gap made by a broken and rotted board, I saw it was Jessie. Her foot fell a few inches from my nose as she stepped over the gap without noticing me. Lying in the dirt, under the porch, in an uncomfortable position, I saw her come up to her brother.

  “What are you doing ?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sneaking a smoke.”

  “So what ?” he answered. “What are you sneaking ?”

  Jessie took out a flask hidden under her arm and brought it to her lips. She took a big swig and then exhaled loudly, as though blowing off steam. Her voice was raspy.

  “Who were you talking to ?”

  “No one.”

  “You remember, Stéphane, what the doctor said…”

  She didn’
t finish her sentence. From where I lay, I couldn’t see what she was looking at. But I did see something come over her face, her expression changing from idle curiosity to indescribable horror. With a scream that curdled my blood, she scampered as far away as the porch would allow. I couldn’t see either of them anymore. Jessie swore like a truck driver, using every possible swear word one after the other.

  “That’s totally gross ! When are you going to stop doing that ? Eh ? When ? ! !”

  She ran in the house, slamming the door behind her.

  Since I wasn’t about to hang around for the explanation, I was already out from under the porch and heading for the exits. Stéphane Pinchault jumped down on the snow behind me. He was coming towards me, walking slowly like the creatures in The Night of the Living Dead.

  His eyes were shining like some kind of freak. I kept running through the trees and the junk, dizzy, not knowing which direction to take. I turned around just in time to see him suddenly materialize from behind a tree, right in front of me, speaking frantically.

  “When are we doing it ?” he said. “When ? I need to know.”

  I wanted to tell him to go home, to go to sleep, that for sure he had some pills he should take. His tortured face was livid. His eyes were demented. He lifted his arm and held out his hand, red with blood. He was holding a dead rabbit.

  Terrified, I ran for my life as he moaned behind me. I jumped on my Yamaha and I saw him, among the trees and the junk, twirling and shaking the rabbit in his outstretched hand. The snowmobile started right up and the clutch began whistling, squealing at the moon, the sound mixing with Stéphane’s morbid howls. The lights in the house were all on. And, while Robert Pinchault and Jessie came out on the porch, I powered out onto the road that went by the house.

  The Yamaha was moving at a good clip. With my teeth clenched, I squeezed the gas all the way. I couldn’t get my mind off the bloody hand holding the carcass. My kind-of-broken headlight swung back and forth shining this way and that on the snow in front of me. I got to the railroad tracks and hit the hill going almost seventy-five kilometres an hour.