Break Away

by Sylvain Hotte

  In the second period, the game got even more physical. They continued to forecheck and our defence had its work cut out for them. At thirteen minutes, Gagnon spotted me at centre ice. He put a beauty right on my stick. Full out, I blew by two defencemen who had joined the attack and misread the play. I was in alone in front of the goalie who I easily beat five hole. Once again, the crowd went nuts. I raised my arms and my teammates skated over to me.

  I felt a sense of relief. My legs were coming back. My wind was good. And my instincts seemed to be on the mend, along with my coordination. I was back in my groove. Everything was on its way back to normal.

  Larry, all ramped up by the two-goal lead over the toughest team in the league, dished out orders left and right, marching up and down behind the bench. We had to trap, shut down the game, protect the lead and wait for an opening to attack.

  We were lined up for the face off when we heard the crowd start screaming. I turned around just in time to see a dead rabbit, trailing blood as it slid along the ice. It came to a stop right between my skates.

  My legs started to wobble. I didn’t know what to think. Most of the fans were showing their disgust. Others started laughing, including the gang of drunks. An unspeakable rage came over me, and with a cry that could be heard from one corner of the rink to the other, I slapped the rabbit right back at them. It didn’t even get close. The poor animal came apart in mid-air. Quite a few spectators were hit by pieces and splattered with blood. It was definitely sickening.

  Everyone in the crowd was yelling at me. When I got to the bench, the expressions on the faces of my teammates were more than perplexed. I don’t think anybody understood why I had done what I did. Larry, eyes popping out of his head, ran over to me and began yelling.

  “What the hell is that all about ? Are you nuts ? ! ! !”

  I headed for the locker room. At the end of the period, Sept-Îles scored its first goal of the game.

  Between periods the mood was glum and then some. I stuck to myself, sitting in front of my locker, not speaking or looking at anyone. Larry, who had already forgotten the incident, still pumped up at the thought of a possible victory, had taken out his whiteboard and was frenetically drawing while emphasizing that we had to jam the neutral zone with all five players to bottle up the enemy.

  And all I could see was that rabbit sliding up to me.

  “McKenzie !” snapped Larry. “Are you listening ?”

  No, I wasn’t listening. My ears were buzzing. I sat there, sweating in my gear, holding a bottle of Gatorade, with a feeling like none of this was real. I was sure I was losing it.

  I came back on the ice for the third period with my head in a whirl, my mind completely muddled. I made bad decisions every time I was on the ice, contributing to four Sept-Îles goals in a span of twelve minutes. The crowd was incensed. No doubt cranked up by the rabbit event, they showered us with insults. Me especially.

  Larry climbed up into the stands to fight the drunks. That night was pathetic.

  As I left the locker room, the coach stopped me in the corridor.

  “Practice tomorrow,” he said.

  “I’m not coming to practice anymore,” I said, pushing past him and continuing on my way.

  Sylvie was waiting for me in her little car. She barely looked at me during the ride home. She couldn’t have believed her eyes when she saw me shoot a dead rabbit into the crowd.

  The pick-up wasn’t there when we got home.

  “What’s Papa up to ?” I asked.

  “He’s spending some time out in the bush.”

  That night, in my room, I pulled down my posters of the 1993 Canadiens Stanley Cup team and my favourite player, Vincent Lecavalier. I stuffed them in the back of my closet and stretched out on my bed. Now the walls of my room were bare.

  I told myself it was all for the best. There was nothing more to worry about. It was obvious ; I’d have to quit school and find a job. Only, there weren’t any more jobs around. Nothing said I couldn’t go live in the city, anyway. I’d get my own apartment in Quebec City and study mechanics. I’d work with Mike. We’d build up the business and that would be cool.

  The next day, I woke up with a killer headache. There was still a buzzing in my ears, it seemed like my mental confusion was going to last for a while.

  I took off on my skidoo, no tuque, running shoes on my feet, hunting jacket unbuttoned. I must have looked like an idiot. I rode my Yamaha all day through the woods. It had rained all night. A thick fog had come in from the water, heavy with rain that began to fall, quickly changing to freezing rain. A thick coat of crystalline ice soon covered the forest. It was beautiful, but threatening in the way it seemed to crush everything that was living under its weight. In every direction, you could hear branches collapsing under the weight of the ice. The loud cracking played a gloomy symphony in the forest.

  Up beyond my father’s natau-assi, at one end of Lake Matamek, the trees that had been clear-cut by the Company stretched off into infinity like a cemetery, their stumps sticking up like tombstones. “Here lies a tree that once stood.” What could the Company say now that it had closed its doors ? Nothing. The city boys had scooped up all the money, and our men were poorer than ever. And what was going through my father’s mind ?

  I went around the lake and came to the cabin. When I got there, I saw skidoo tracks in front. That didn’t bother me. It’s common knowledge that the cabin is available to anyone who wants to use it. The only rule is, tidy up before you leave.

  There were footprints in the ice. I figured that someone had been there the previous night. When I opened the door, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. From a cord that stretched from one side of the cabin’s only room to the other hung seven rabbits strung up by their paws. They were dead and frozen. The blood drained out of my face. I jumped on my snowmobile and went zooming across the lake as fast as I could despite the dangerously thin ice. I took the Company road that led to the beaver dam.

  It must have been about three o’clock, I can’t really remember exactly. Robert Pinchault’s car was gone and all the lights were out. I drove the skidoo up the unshovelled driveway and cut the engine in front of the porch. Stationary, I waited for what seemed like a long time ; the only sound was the crack of falling branches.

  A strange noise, like a rusty old pulley, drew my attention to the barn, at the back of the yard. Through the cracks between the old grey boards, I could see a glow. A trail wound from the side door of the house to the barn. I followed it, hands jammed in my pockets, feet freezing in my running shoes that were slipping on the ice.

  The heavy door swung open, creaking painfully on its hinges. A disturbing smell struck my nostrils. I couldn’t describe it, but it made me think of death. Then I spotted it, an old horse that could scarcely lift an eyelid when it saw me ; I heard a couple of chickens clucking. A thick layer of dust covered piles of junk that must have belonged to Robert Pinchault’s father .

  The land had once been cultivated, but now it was littered with garbage. An old tractor with its tires removed was resting on woodblocks. One of them was cracked, so the poor machine was sinking into the ground. The entire barn sagged in the middle, as if the earth were slowly swallowing it.

  Inside the barn, through the planks over head, I could make out a dancing light, flickering like candlelight. It must have been what Stéphane Pinchault had called the hayloft. On my left, some stairs led to the loft, where they must have kept animal fodder long ago.

  I climbed slowly up what seemed more like a ladder than anything you’d call stairs, then pulled myself up into the loft where I came upon a number of dry old dusty hay bales. They had been piled up to form a wall with a small opening in the middle that functioned as a door that you could only get through in a squatting position.

  Once through to the other side, I came upon something as hard to believe as it was horrifying : a couple of hutches piled one on top of the other full of live rabbits. And as if that wasn’t enough, t
here were at least a dozen big vivariums, swarming with flies and insects of every kind, bred in vast quantities and heated by 60-watt bulbs. All you could hear was the incessant buzzing of the little bugs. With my nose right up against one of these revolting cages I could make out thousands of white maggots squirming and wiggling on a lump of furry flesh.

  But the saddest thing of all was the line that stretched across the barn with dead rabbits hanging from it, a squirrel and a muskrat. And beneath this morbid scene was a table set with knives and some candles sitting in big puddles of dried yellow wax.

  I picked at the dried melted wax with my fingers while staring at the bloody knives. A sudden sound startled me. All at once, my blood turned cold and shivers ran up and down my spine. Someone was coming up the stairs. There was no time to hide, a shadow had appeared in the little opening in the stacked hay bales.

  Her hair was down, ratty, her face drawn. Her grey cotton pants were tucked in to fur-lined boots that were too big for her. In one shaking hand she held a bottle of bourbon. She came up to me with a twisted smile.

  “Hey, champ. What do you think of little brother’s work of art ? Sick, eh ?”

  She laughed, uncomfortably. With a trembling hand, she brought the bottle to her lips and took a huge swig.

  “What a cool house, eh ? What cool kids Robert Pinchault has ! A boozer and a nutcase.”

  She gestured at the grotesque scene. Then, nonchalantly, she stepped forward and offered me the bottle. I refused.

  “I’d have thought,” she said, “that once you’d of checked out this little house of horrors from top to bottom, you’d have been ready to call it a day and leave us the hell alone. What do you think ?”

  What I actually thought was that my life had been a nightmare ever since the day my quad broke down and I decided to get help up at the Pinchaults’.

  After these harsh words, Jessie’s face softened. Her big green eyes were opened wide, shining dimly.

  “What did you expect ? I’ve lived like this all my life. That’s why I don’t hang out with nice pretty boys like you. What I get are the jerks like Jonathan Sauvé.”

  And then she added, coming closer :

  “You know, it’s really cute, you using my brother to get hooked up with me. That’s definitely getting you where you want to go and you know it, don’t you.”

  She pressed up against me, her hands on my arms. Her breath was warm, but the boozy smell turned me off. She was smashed and I didn’t want to encourage her, but she was insistent, planting her lips on mine. I tried to squirm away ; no luck. I gave in without thinking what was right or wrong or anything else.

  I squeezed her, holding her against my chest. I kissed her icy lips, drinking in her bad breath, her furred tongue coiling around my own. And there, suspended over our heads, like sprigs of lethal mistletoe, hung a row of dead animals.

  She pushed me away just when I was about ready to go for it. Someone, or something, was moving in the room. We weren’t alone. Someone was making disgusting noises with his mouth. Slowly, but surely, we could make out Stéphane Pinchault walking along one of the huge beams that supported the barn’s roof. He was totally naked, shamelessly exposing his disfigured face. He was swinging an old rusted pulley that made a terrible squeaking noise in his hand.

  Jessie snapped out of her stupor as if she’d stepped out of a cold shower, walked below the beam warning Stéphane to take it easy. He pretended not to hear her and kept swinging the squeaking pulley and making weird noises. Then, suddenly, he threw the pulley as hard as he could at one of the vivariums, which shattered in pieces. A cloud of insects swarmed out and filled the tiny room.

  Like someone who’s seen a ghost, I dashed across the icy ground in my running shoes. I slipped and fell a couple of times, and snow packed into my sleeves. I jumped onto the Yamaha and took off. On the road, I passed Robert Pinchault on his way home.

  I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was in bed at nine o’clock sharp, to Sylvie’s astonishment. I tossed and turned under the covers, eyes wide open. My window was frosted over. There was a deep arctic chill outside.

  Next morning, I stayed home from school ; my life had changed and I should be preparing for my mechanic’s course in Quebec City. I got on my skidoo to tell Mike the good news. I knew he’d be glad to hear that from now on we were going to be partners.

  When I got to the shop, I was upset to find it empty. As far back as I could remember, Michel had always been there from morning ’til night. But not today. There wasn’t any sign of him. Instead, there was a photo of Nuliaq duct taped to the window of the front door. I yelled out her name and kicked the door to wake the damned dog up. But I’d never hear her bark again. She’d never again lick the hand I held out to her.

  The boat ramp was covered in snow. The tide had dumped a big pile of ice in the way, but someone had opened up a way through. I didn’t have any problem getting down to the beach. A couple of seconds later I killed the engine. It shuddered once or twice and shut off.

  Dawn was still breaking and the sun shone through the icy mist that rose off the water, filling the sky with pale pink light. Thick masses of mist, moving like clouds, would occasionally part to reveal a breathtaking vista on the distant shore and the Chic-Choc Mountains of the Gaspé. Only along the St. Lawrence could you see a landscape like that. Then it came to me. Once I’d met an old woman, a painter, who told me that she came here every day she could remember and never saw the sky the same way twice. It was always different : every day, every hour, every minute. That’s one amazing thing about living close to nature. You realize how, like everything else in life, it’s constantly changing ; sometimes magnificent, sometimes horrible, but always alive.

  A layer of ice had formed that extended thirty metres out from the beach. You could hear it cracking under your feet. Seated on my snowmobile, I turned and saw Jessie walking towards me, all wrapped up in a big blue wool coat. Her long curly hair rippled in the gentle breeze. She came close. Her thigh brushed against mine.

  “Hi,” I said, as if expecting to see her.

  “Hey,” she said, looking at the ocean. “Thanks for inviting me here. It’s true that it’s beautiful.”

  “I’ve been coming here since I was little.”

  “It takes your breath away,” she said.

  She stared deep into my eyes. I saw her freckled face and her mane of hair, where the sun had come to weave a delicate aura. Her eyes were creased. And she smiled constantly, as if her heart was filled with immense happiness.

  She put her hand on my thigh, supporting herself as she leaned toward me.

  Her hair barely touched my face. I found myself just inches from her now, and her breath, warm and sweet, with a hint of mint, caressed my mouth. We were in a spaceship, on another world, sheltered from the cold and the wind from the sea. Her lips met mine. Our tongues touched and we kissed, very softly, with a tender shyness. Warmth flooded into my stomach. I wanted to take her in my arms, but she held my arm to stop me. For a brief moment, her cheek brushed mine.

  “I’m sorry for what happened yesterday,” she said.

  “I should be the one apologizing. It was my fault.”

  She smiled and gave me a final conniving look, eyes blazing.

  And then, suddenly, without any warning, she started running full tilt towards the water. I watched, thunderstruck, as she ran across the ice only to disappear beneath the broken mirror of the sky. The ice sheet had cracked open, exposing patches of black, and she had vanished.

  I started up the snowmobile. I gunned the motor three times and flew like an arrow towards the river. I slid for about twenty metres before the ice gave way under my weight. I had built up enough speed to surf on top of the water, as if headed towards the mountains, until inertia took over and I sank too, headed for the bottom.

  The contact with the frozen water was a total shock. It blasted my senses, grabbing me by the arms and legs, kicking my survival instinct into full play. I frantically struggled wi
th the thin pieces of ice that couldn’t support my weight, finally touching the rocky bottom with my feet. My hunting jacket and snow pants were soaked through, but somehow I managed to climb onto the ice floe.

  I crawled forward, chilled to the bone, with only one thought in mind : get back on solid ground. Someone was running towards me from the pier. It was Michel, screaming. My vision was blurred, I couldn’t make out his face, as if there was a thick white fog between me and the rest of the world. The only thing I could recognize was his damn Toronto Maple Leafs hat. He looked so stupid with that hat. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I knew he was holding me and tearing off my frozen clothes. I was paralyzed, powerful tremors shook my heart. I was freezing to death. I closed my eyes.

  Chapter Seven

  There sat the Dark Prince in his armchair, watching the coloured lights blinking on the tree.

  Christmas had been a total bust. My dad cashed his first welfare check and Sylvie found out that Gordon was married and had two kids. As for me, I was still recovering from the acute hypothermia that almost got me. I spent my days in the house, wrapped up in blankets, unable to venture outside.

  Clearly, Jessie had not been on the beach that day. It was one monstrous hallucination, except for my plunge into the river at minus twenty. My Yamaha lay on the bottom, carried along by the shifting ice and the tidal currents. In my pocket was her letter asking me to forgive her, they’d sent her little brother to a psychiatric facility, she told me, and she had gone to live with her mother in Quebec City. She ended the brief but compelling letter by asking me to look out for her father.