Agassiz Stories

by Sandra Birdsell

  Hey, boy, do you want to keep these? Livingston had asked, holding up his mother’s beaded moccasins. He’d come with a number of other men, now forgotten, to help carry her away and to poke around through the remains of his family. The wind rose and the icy blast of it seemed to bore straight through his skull. He wished suddenly that he’d been able to find one place for his children instead of shipping them off, piece by piece, to live out the flood among strangers. The ice slush was like crushed glass as it slid swiftly beneath and around his boat. He rowed steadily. His arms began to ache. The sound of a shrill whistle jarred him. He turned quickly and saw the huge white hull of a fishing vessel bearing down on him. It was the Apex, bringing supplies to Agassiz.

  They plucked Maurice from his rowboat and towed his boat back to town. They took him back to the courthouse, unloaded the supplies, had something to eat, and then Maurice, by virtue of his title, Old Man River, was invited to come along on a cruise about the town to show a newspaper reporter who had come to see for himself what damage had been done.

  “This is incredible,” the man said. His name was Charles Medlake. The tall thin man spoke to them as though they hadn’t already known that the flood was incredible, devastating, all the fancy words he used to describe what had happened to their town. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he kept saying.

  He thinks he pays us a compliment, Maurice thought. Being ten feet under is a great accomplishment. He stood at the railing on the stern of the Apex with Bill Livingston and the reporter, listening to their conversation with growing impatience.

  “I bloody well hope that we never do again, either,” said Bill Livingston, but there was a strange tone of pride in his booming voice. “But according to an Indian legend, this happens every hundred years.”

  Medlake’s hands shook as he cupped them and lit another cigarette. He drew deeply on it and expelled shreds of blue smoke which were snatched by the wind. “Have many people left the area for good?” he asked.

  “Hell no. We’re tough chickens.”

  Maurice shifted from one foot to another as the reporter asked the mayor many questions. According to an Indian legend? That was the first he’d heard of it. What Indian? Outwardly, he appeared solid and calm. His parka was unzipped, revealing his green curling sweater with the white rearing bucks on it. Mika’s mother had knit it for him. He chewed thoughtfully on a toothpick, moving it from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “This isn’t the worst of it,” the mayor said. “We haven’t been east of town yet. The ice took out three or four houses.”

  “I’ve seen enough for now,” the man said. He flicked his half-smoked cigarette over the stern. “Listen, the luckiest house in Agassiz is the worst hit in Winnipeg. I never saw anything this bad in the city.”

  “Really?” the mayor said.

  It was what Maurice had suspected. Once they’d figured it out, that the same river that was flooding Agassiz would eventually flood Winnipeg, they screamed bloody murder. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

  “I’d like to get back to the courthouse and call the paper to send out a photographer. This should be recorded.”

  Livingston called out directions to the pilot. The fishing boat began a slow wide turn.

  “The feds have got to open their eyes to this,” Livingston said. “Pictures would help. We estimate that property damage alone will be close to five million dollars. Then there’s the months of lost revenue to consider.” He turned suddenly to Maurice. “How long has it been since you’ve earned a cent, Maurie?”

  “Eh?” He was jolted loose from his tumbling thoughts.

  “I said, how are you going to manage to feed the kiddies when they get home? Let alone afford the lumber to rebuild the house and buy new furniture?”

  “Well, I … ,” Maurice began and stopped. I was prepared. My furniture is high and dry. We took what was left of the preserves to Mika’s sister’s place. But there was something in Livingston’s tone of voice that kept him quiet. He sensed that there was more here than an innocent question.

  Livingston didn’t wait for his reply. “We must be compensated. We’re going to need money and lots of it. Interest-free money for the business community to replace their inventory. I’ve lost my entire stock of hardware. The farmers, their seed and fertilizer. And people like Maurie, here, they’ll need money to feed and clothe the family. He’s got six kids.”

  “Five,” Maurice said. “I’ve got five.” He was stung. Money for people like Maurie, here. How are you going to feed your family? A straightforward question. But it rankled. It was intended to remind him that at one time he’d swept their floors, carried out their shit pails and shovelled clean the barns. He’d fallen down drunk in the street. He’d been looked upon with pity or scorn. And that he had risen only so far in twenty years that his main concern would be how to feed six mouths, nothing more. He sees me as being another flood victim, same as all the others. Maurice freed his hands from his parka pockets and cut the air in front of the two men in an impatient motion.

  “Compensation, to be sure,” he said.

  “What was that?” Charles Medlake spoke directly to him for the first time.

  “Compensation, to be sure. By all means.” His was the quiet reasonable voice of Henry Roy, his mentor. He hoped it was the voice of someone who would listen for so long to the clamour of others and then, with a few chosen words, bring clarity to their ramblings so as to make them look ridiculous. “But look here, compensation and interest-free loans are only a small part of the whole picture,” he continued.

  The newsman moved in closer. He began to make notes on a tablet. “Just what do you think should be done?”

  “Many things. Certainly, I could use a hand just as everyone else in this town could use a hand. I’m a businessman too. I’ve lost more than furniture.” He avoided Livingston’s eyes. “But I personally wouldn’t care if I didn’t get a penny from the government if we could take steps to make certain that this here flood will never happen again.”

  Livingston laughed outright and turned away.

  “But how is that possible?” Medlake asked.

  Maurice was unsettled by the laughter. He shoved his hands back into his pockets. They were heading back towards the courthouse. They had circled the town and approached the stone building from behind, moving slowly down Elm Avenue. The trees were bare, bark black with orange rusty-looking growths in the crooks of limbs. A chair was caught in the lower branches of one tree. Maurice cleared his throat to speak. Build a sewage treatment plant so we no longer shit and piss on the river. We didn’t have floods like this one until we got the running water. My God, the river, she doesn’t pretend to be beautiful, but some honour is due, eh? Lure the goldeye and pickerel back with clean water. Forget the Indian legend that says we have no say in the matter. We should remember the river. She gave this region its life. But he knew they saw the river with different eyes. To them it was heavy, sluggish and ugly, a breeding ground for mosquitoes and eels.

  “It’s impossible to prevent flooding,” Livingston said. He took Medlake by the elbow and attempted to steer him away by pointing out some particular damage.

  “Wait, let him finish,” Medlake said.

  “We need to look to the future,” Maurice said.

  “How?”

  “With all our minds, we should be able to come up with something instead of just saying it happens every hundred years. We should think about building a permanent dike around the town, for instance, or dig drainage ditches in the country to let the spring runoff enter into the Red further downstream.”

  “Winnipeg would never go for that,” Livingston interrupted. “Because it would mean more water for them.”

  He speaks as though he has just bit into a lemon, Maurice thought.

  “There must be a way around it,” Medlake said.

  The boat nudged slowly into the courthouse yard towards a large oak tree in the centre of it. The pilot cut the engine and Maurice was
jolted forward as the craft met bark with a hollow thud. The Apex whistled its arrival. Dark shapes appeared at the window and then the back door swung open. Woods and Stevens stepped out on the stairs. They climbed into Maurice’s rowboat and began rowing towards them. Woods cupped his hands to his mouth. “Survivors,” he shouted. “We found two women and a child stranded on the roof of a granary.”

  “Listen,” Medlake said to Maurice. “I’d like to talk to you later on. What you say makes good sense.”

  Maurice felt the careful attentive posture of Livingston’s large body. “Suits me,” he said, trying to sound casual.

  “Where can I find you?”

  “If I’m not here-”

  “He’s over at the hotel,” the mayor finished. “Maurie here doesn’t like our company. He’s always been what you might call a lone wolf.”

  Maurice’s face grew warm. “Shoot, it’s not that,” he said. He felt as though his mouth was fall of marbles. He juggled words in his mind. “It’s not that. It’s the basement. She’s going to cave in.”

  “What?” Medlake asked. “And you’re taking me in there?”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Livingston said. “The walls are two feet thick. This place is built like a brick shithouse.”

  The rowboat came alongside and they got into it. Maurice sat between the two men, slouched down into his parka, his fists curled tightly inside his pockets. Blow, goddammit, he urged as they approached the courthouse. Now. He imagined walls crumbling.

  They removed their hipwaders in the basement. Maurice sat on the cot in the jail cell and leaned against the rough Tyndalstone wall and closed his eyes.

  “Well, Maurie,” Livingston said and laughed. “Drainage ditches, eh? It looks as though the wrong one ran for mayor.”

  Maurice didn’t answer. He could see his parents’ fresh graves, a mixture of yellow clay and topsoil. This room carried the memory. The priest had found him beside the river, trying to build a raft so that he could float downstream to his mother’s people. And had agreed, Maurice could stay. He didn’t have to join his brothers in the convent in the city. He’d sat in this very cell, tracing the outlines of strange creatures locked in the stone without knowing what they were while the men of the town decided his fate. Send for his mother’s people, the priest advised. And so he waited it out in this room for a full week. They didn’t want me? he asked. Henry Roy winked. You wouldn’t have wanted them, he said. I never sent the message. And he took Maurice in and gave him work in the hotel. It would have turned out well if it hadn’t been that it took too long for a town to forget a person who would die suffocating on their own vomit. Dead drunk.

  “Come on, Old Man River,” Livingston said and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go on up and meet those survivors.”

  Maurice followed him into the main hall. Two women and the child huddled beneath blankets within the circle of men. The men parted to let Maurice and Livingston through. The women and child were of mixed blood, Maurice realized instantly. Mongrels. The women had identical expressions, wide smiles, like fools, displaying their rotting teeth. Don’t let anyone tell you different, Henry Roy had said, mongrels don’t make better dogs. But the child studied Maurice with the same serious black eyes as his mother had in his dream last night. If you’re going to have a large family, she said, you will need a bigger boat. These people didn’t even have a boat. Not even a small one. The men seemed to be waiting for him to do something.

  “Do you speak French?” Maurice asked the women.

  They laughed and covered the gaping holes in their teeth with hands that looked to be tinged by wood smoke.

  Maurice felt the floor move.

  “No, no, not French,” Livingston said. “You never know. You could be related. Say something to them in Indian.”

  “In a pig’s ass,” Maurice said, his anger breaking loose in upraised fists. The floor tilted. And then there was a sound, like thunder, beneath them. Relief flooded every part of his body and his knees suddenly felt weak. He felt like laughing hysterically.

  Stevens ran into the room. “Clear out,” he yelled. “The basement just went.”

  The reporter scrambled for his parka. Maurice led the women and child to the back door. They were calm. They pulled their blankets about themselves and walked slowly, as though they were accustomed to calamities. Bill Livingston ran to the tables, gathered papers to his chest, set them back down again. Maurice heard the roar of the water filling the basement, flooding the little room. He lifted the child quickly and handed her to Stevens. When she saw the boat, she clung to Maurice’s sweater and began to cry. He peeled her loose and handed her down. I was right, he told himself. Once again, I was right. He felt like laughing and he felt like crying. Thank God, the Apex was big enough, it would hold them all. It would carry the whole damned works of them to the hills.

  BOUNDARY LINES

  owdy Doody,” Maurice said as a customer sat down in his barber chair. The greeting was intended to disarm, one he reserved for strangers. With a flourish, he swept the striped barber cloth around the man’s wide shoulders and fastened it with a clip at his sunburned neck.

  SCISSORS SHARPENED WHILE YOU WAIT: 25 CENTS.

  DRESSMAKERS TAKE NOTE: 3 FOR $1.00!!

  His sign, intended as a joke, blared from one corner of the plate glass mirror and above it:

  WE NEED YOUR HEAD IN OUR BUSINESS

  Head number twenty-nine. And judging from the smell, this head hadn’t been washed in a week. Maurice made a note to dip the comb into disinfectant when he’d finished with this one.

  “Want me to lower your ears a bit, eh?”

  The man laughed, settled back and crossed his legs. His work boots were caked with yellow clay. Maurice recognized him as one of the Franklin brothers the council had hired from a neighbouring municipality to help construct the ring dike around the town. All day, the incessant rumbling of the heavy machinery could be heard as earth around Agassiz was scraped flat in preparation for the dike. In the north end of town, truckloads of dirt were already being dumped into place.

  “She’s one hot day,” the man said.

  “You betcha.” Maurice in his crisp white barber shirt, its collar like a priest’s collar, appeared to be cool. The high neck and heavily starched shirt would prevent splinters of hair from becoming imbedded in his skin, but it also kept his body heat in. He raised his arms and winced with the pain that shot into his cramped muscles. Along the far wall, sitting on a bench, three men waited their turn. Behind the half-wall partition, all six pool tables were in use and thick smoke curled in the lights above the tables.

  Maurice parted the man’s sandy-coloured hair, combed it into place. He reached for the scissors. “So, how’s the work going on the dike?” he asked. “Everything going according to Hoyle?”

  The man’s hair was coarse and flew from the tips of his scissors, spraying the front of his shirt. Maurice only half-listened while the man talked, nodding occasionally and saying, “Oh, I see.”

  The smell of smoke mixed with hair tonic and the heavy odour that came from the pile of multicoloured hair on the floor made his stomach churn. It had become his smell. It lingered in all of his clothing, in his leather tool kit, so that when he took the kit home with him to cut his children’s hair, the smell was there in the house as well. He’d been looking forward to getting away from it, had anticipated the weekend and fishing with his brothers. Now, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d have to telephone them and make up some excuse. He couldn’t say, my wife doesn’t want you in the house.

  “How long since your last haircut?” Maurice asked. He would know from the man’s reply, his preference, how much to cut off. Then he listened while the man recited the list of complaints, machinery breakdowns, about the houses that still had to be moved inside the dike’s boundaries.

  When Maurice had come to work that morning, it had been with Mika’s “over my dead body” echoing in his ears. Smoke from forest fire
s had blown in over the town during the night and hung low, turning the sun red. The effect was like Mika’s anger, tinging all with a faint golden hue, making him feel uneasy, strange, as though his feet were not touching the ground completely. “Over your dead body, eh? Well, that could be arranged,” he’d retorted. She’d reminded him of his brothers’ last visit. How Alphonse had gotten drunk and puked on the kitchen floor. But the worst of it, she said, standing there at the door with her hands on her hips, was that they’d spoken French the whole time.

  “Maurice Ovide Lafrenière?” a voice said behind him, sending his thoughts scattering. The voice was low, husky, as though the person had a cold.

  “Yes?” Maurice stopped snipping, stood poised with the scissors suspended in mid-air.

  “You are the person responsible for the digging?”

  Maurice turned slowly to face an old man. “I beg your pardon? I think you confuse me with someone else.”

  “Are you Maurice Lafrenière?” His face was a ripple of corrugated wrinkles from squinting into the sun and the wind. Mucus, like yellow pearls, had congealed in the corners of his black eyes. He was shorter than Maurice and of slight build. He raised his hand and Maurice saw that it was smooth and strong looking, the cords in his wrist sinewy ropes beneath his brown skin.

  “Absolutely,” Maurice said. The smell of the man made his eyes burn. It was the same smell that still clung to the corners of the furnace room. It was the sour smell of the flood. Why didn’t these people stay on the reservation where they belonged? As long as there were people like Mika who would buy their braided door mats, invite them in for bread and jam, they would continue to come traipsing in looking for handouts.