by Dave Godfrey
In the morning the children came to castrate them, and then they were set free. Hair was pulled from their beards and their wounds were lacerated before they left.
In the night Ole Siuk wrote out a message for Piet, the leader, although he did not awaken him.
“I guess I’ve followed Areskoui and that crew long enough. I feel the need of those Edmundston men more than anything. My great-aunt was a nun in the Ukraine, but she was of unsound motives in her religious pursuits. When she was not made Mother Superior at a time she had appointed, she stripped herself naked during a Sunday mass and declared herself to the world as an atheist. The family has had bad luck ever since. Maybe this act of mine will atone in some way. I wouldn’t visit us, however, on your way back. I’ll probably be married to the woman who collects thumbs.”
Piet had no one to talk to, but he chuckled to himself as he came upon the birch bright sea.
“It’s lucky old McLaww didn’t make it to that part of the contest. He would have hated me for the rest of his life.”
“This is a magnificent day for the nation’s capital and for millions of Americans who will visit Washington in the years to come,” the President said, smiling at Mr. Hirshhorn at his side.
“Throughout the world,” the President said, “Mr. Hirshhorn has sought the great art of our time — those expressions of man’s will to make sense of his experience on earth, to find order and meaning in the physical world about him, to render what is familiar in a new way.”
It was late June when he arrived at the bay.
“I’ve come for Egsdrull,” said Piet to the manager of the lumber yard. “I’m the carver from Queen Charlotte.” He handed him the receipt.
“You’re a little late,” replied the manager. “And as well there’s the little matter of the seven terms: shape an axe, sing its joints, engrave its shaft, bless its point, name it in ten tongues, knit soul and intent, determine where lies its enemy.”
“I had men who could do all that. Ole Siuk could have shaped it out of brittle rock; Pier Dela Ombre was once with the Scalla; the best man with a graver you ever saw was Torah Black; Looky McLaww would have had a libation for the blade; Andre Mineur knew a baker’s-dozen tongues; Scrop Calla would have taught you a thing or two about serpents biting their own tails and how to hoop a barrel hoop. And I, why do you think I came all this way? Put that axe in my hands and show me the tree, show me Egsdrull, and God himself will not be able to catch the bloody chips.”
“Terms is terms,” the manager said. “The sea probably has fish who could do all that, but you don’t see him standing there begging.”
Piet could find nothing to say.
“I’ve got something out behind the slab pile that might do for you,” the manager said. “We flooded those ten or twelve years back when we gave up hope on you.”
Beyond the slab pile, where a small red fork-lift truck scurried with its swaying load of sixteen- and eighteen-foot slabs, was a scene of desolation. The creek which once had there flowed into the Bay of Chaleur was dammed. Forty feet or more on either side was flooded. All the trees that once had grown there were black stubs. Not ankle high, as a good piece of future meadowland might look waiting for the years to rot the stumps, but man high, totem high: trunks like amputated limbs.
“You’re free to make something of one of those if you like,” said the manager. “But I don’t expect any of them is fit for a trip back to the coast. Hollow rotten.”
“I did not come all that way,” said Piet. He was screaming. “Lose all those men, suffer all that laceration. Father, father, I am a grown man. You promised me Egsdrull. I discovered the Pacific; I fed China for three months; I played poker with Lord Astor; I kissed the dirty Hun’s lady. I courted death. You have forsworn me. Thiefman.”
“Forsworn you, my ass. Terms is terms. There it is in black and white. Ninth of May or all terms void. Seven terms to be fulfilled before delivery. It’s time you earned your daily bread for a change, young fellow. Don’t father me. Perhaps we can fit you in on the butt-saw, if you can keep up. You’re not so spry as you once were. What do you say, young fellow? Want to try Newfoundland?”
President Johnson formally accepted the Hirshhorn art collection today “on behalf of the American people” in a ceremony at noon in the Rose Garden of the White House.
Piet Catogas lasted a week at work before his death. Not on the butt-saw, which is a skilled task and requires a young and agile man, but out in the yard in the sunlight, sorting the lumber by lengths, widths, and grades.
This was a job for the young or the very old, but he found no sympathy among his comrades and was unable to speak to them of the carvings that he had made before he was half their age, back on the island.
More than one of his wounds was infected, and though he bathed in the warm sea he knew it was futile and awaited his death with great equanimity. At night he wondered if Dela Ombre would have blond sons later with Katrina or what Torah had thought about as he fired into the flame and smoke; he chuckled at the thought of Looky beaten by the horseshoes on pikes and wondered how many winters Calla would survive; he was afraid Mineur had sold out to those madmen and prayed for Ole Siuk.
In the mornings he slept later and later. He would have been fired on the morning he died if ever he had reached the yard where men sorted the sixteen-foot one-by-sixes into four grades without a passing glance at the ship which came for his body.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“The Generation of Hunters,” “An Opening Day,” “Flying Fish,” “Fulfilling Our Foray,” and “Mud Lake: If Any” in slightly different form, appeared originally in Saturday Night.
“The Way We Do It Here” was first printed, somewhat shortened in Ontario 67.
“The Hard-Headed Collector” appeared in The Tamarack Review initially.
Particular thanks must be directed to Kildare Dobbs, for it was he who admitted the bias in the average Canadian reader against stories of this breed of reality and yet not only invented the disguise under which many of them found their way into print but encouraged the creation and publication of the full work. The Canada Council kindly provided a short-term grant during the summer of 1967 when much of the final rewriting was completed. An unknown New York Times humourist unwittingly provided some of the phrases in the final story.
DAVE GODFREY was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1938. A writer, publisher, and academic, Godfrey published three works of fiction: the novel The New Ancestors, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the short story collections Death Goes Better with Coca-Cola and Dark Must Yield. He was co-founder of both House of Anansi and New Press, and ran Press Porcépic with his wife, writer Ellen Godfrey. He studied at the University of Toronto, Iowa, and Stanford, and taught literature at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria. Dave Godfrey died in Victoria, B.C., in 2015.
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”
The A List
Basic Black
with Pearls Helen Weinzweig
Ticknor Sheila Heti
This All Happened Michael Winter
Kamouraska Anne Hebert
The Circle Game Margaret Atwood
De Niro’s Game Rawi Hage
Eleven Canadian Novelists Interviewed by Graeme Gibson
Like This Leo McKay Jr.
The Honeyman Festival Marian Engel
La Guerre Trilogy Roch Carrier
Selected Poems Alden Nowlan
No Pain Like This Body Harold Sonny Ladoo
Poems for all the Annettes Al Purdy
Five Legs Graeme Gibson
Selected Short Fiction of Lisa Moore
Survival Margaret Atwood
Queen Rat Lynn Crosbie
Ana Historic Daphne Mariatt
Civil Elegies Dennis Lee
The Outlander Gil Adamson
The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories Roch Carrier
