Boundary

by Andrée A. Michaud

  Overpowered by the smell of jam, he’d for a while forgotten the young girl, allowing the sweetness of August memories to wash over the garden, but the stench of death proved stronger in the long run. It now enveloped Dorothy, who seemed to have given up trying to free him from the trenches of Peter’s Woods. Sorry, he murmured, then summoned his memories, called on them with all his strength, for him, for Dorothy, the apple tree, the field of yellow grass, whose perfection he tried to describe to her despite the inadequacy of words to translate what sifts through the skin to inspire a human being. The colours of childhood, he added, the shades of August, revealing for the first time to the woman with whom he shared his life that memory of a lasting paradise.

  They spent the evening surrounded by those colours, those odours mingling with that of the jam, steaks he grilled over charcoal, braised beans lightly impregnated with the taste from the coals, a taste of endless summer. Stan made up his mind to bury Zaza Mulligan for a few hours, to plant an apple tree over her grave in a yellow hayfield. He’d dig her up the next day, he knew it, or the day after, and would apply himself to other affairs while waiting for her to wake and deliver him a blow on the back of the neck, because she was the stuff of which boomerangs were made. Meanwhile he’d try to live, to breathe normally. He’d trim the vine, would along with his colleagues form a ring around frightened mares, he’d gain his heaven by passing through hell, since unbelievers like himself had no other destiny at hand but that of the damned.

  You had to scour the woods and clean up this forest that had become a danger to children. The day after Zaza Mulligan’s funeral, Saturday 29 July, a group of cottage owners gathered at the house of Victor Morgan, Sissy’s father: Samuel Duchamp and Gilles Ménard, the men who’d led the police to Zaza Mulligan’s body, Bob Lamar, Frenchie’s father, Ted Jamison, a neighbour, Ed McBain, Morgan’s best friend, and Gary Miller, a carpenter used to heavy work, along with his son Scott, a strapping seventeen-year-old a head taller than his father, who seemed determined to prove that he was as tough as anyone.

  It was Vic Morgan, given the state of his daughter, in the throes of a revolt that left him feeling helpless, who’d decided to act. No other child would suffer the fate of Elisabeth Mulligan in the Boundary woods, no other young girl would lose her sister because of reckless risk-taking. After the funeral, as people went back to their cars with their heads down, he’d taken Bob Lamar aside and urged him to recruit Ménard and Duchamp. After what they’d witnessed, those men would be the first to want to rid the forest of its traps. For his part, he committed himself to bringing onside two or three volunteers.

  On the morning of the 29th, Vic Morgan prepared sandwiches, coffee, fruit juice, and waited for the others to arrive while Charlotte did her nails, repeating that this business would only get more people hurt, supposing there still were more traps in Peter’s Woods. As far as she was concerned, Zaza had been the victim of a deplorable accident that had no chance of recurring. The proof was that no one before Zaza had been caught in any traps. If the forest had been full of them, other walkers, that Djill Menarde for instance, would long ago have left behind one of their limbs for the coyotes.

  Charlotte was probably right. In these instances Charlotte’s coldness was always right, but Vic Morgan’s mind would only be at rest once every inch of Peter’s Woods had been ransacked. He felt responsible for Zaza Mulligan’s death, responsible for not having been there, for never having been there when the girls decided to get drunk, to show their legs to all and sundry, to throw their lives to the winds. But he couldn’t share this feeling with Charlotte, who only noticed their daughter when she threw a tantrum, and who only remained with them because she would have been unable to live in a household where she couldn’t set her indifference against the futile agitation of others. Charlotte was like that, her features were locked in an acrimony that only eased off during the make-believe of social soirées, and there was no point in trying to change that. Too much reality would kill her.

  When the men began to arrive, she went to her room. Vic had everyone sit around the big kitchen table, to outline his plan. Bob Lamar, who knew some French thanks to his wife, did some rough translation when necessary, but the plan was clear. They would separate into groups of two, and each team would go through a sector with a fine-tooth comb, then they’d start in again the next day, hoping that new arrivals would join them in the meantime. Morgan had drawn up a map and numbered each of the sectors, starting at the lake and leading into the forest, beyond the various paths used by the children and adolescents. It was a large territory that a handful of men could never cover in one weekend, but all seemed determined to go the limit, to search every bush, to look under every pile of dead branches, every suspicious mound of earth. Their children’s safety was at stake. If need be, they’d devote their next off-days to the task, until they were certain that Boundary was free of the traps set by Pete Landry, whom some began to call a bastard, a damn irresponsible moron, adding that Landry had sold his soul to the forest, and it had quite simply swallowed him up.

  Sam Duchamp quite naturally teamed up with Gilles Ménard, as if Zaza Mulligan had created a bond obliging them to stalk this evil side by side. They’d drawn sector three, the one with Juneau Hill, which Ménard knew well from having often explored it towards the end of the many summers he’d spent at Bondrée, when he got the urge to gorge himself on blueberries. He went there early in the morning, before the heat of the day, and in less than two hours filled a five-pound pot, eager for all that nature had to offer, every kind of aroma or food. He’d show Duchamp the spot, because there were enough berries for three or four pickers and as many bears. Before taking off, the men armed themselves with sticks to stab the ground, and agreed to meet at five o’clock at the campground, where they would plan for the next day.

  Ménard and Duchamp searched all morning, talking little and stopping only to piss or to clean off their boots. They chewed on Morgan’s sandwiches, thickly buttered, as they walked, made hungry by their climb and by their fear of missing a trap. At noon they stopped near the clearing, where several blueberry bushes were weighed down with the still-white fruits, and ate their own sandwiches while talking about the summer’s passing, their wives, their children, unable to utter the word “trap,” but thinking only of that, a jaw whose rust was covered in blood and pieces of skin. They were back on the job within twenty minutes, jabbing at the ground. Shortly after five o’clock they turned around without reaching the end of their sector, where they’d found only buckshot shells from the previous autumn.

  At the appointed hour all the men were back at the campground, dirty, sweat-stained, their arms and necks covered in scratches and insect bites. Morgan offered a round of soft drinks and they took stock of the day around two picnic tables they’d pulled together, one of which was engraved with all the names of the young people who’d brought life to Boundary. No one had found a trap in his sector except Scott Miller, Gary’s son, who’d found a rabbit trap that couldn’t have dated from Landry’s time. They were getting ready to share out the territory for the next day when they saw other men arriving, who’d heard about the search in the course of the day. At six-thirty, almost all the Boundary men were pacing the campground, even old Pat Tanguay, even Bill Cochrane, with his evil humour and his wooden leg. Jack and Ben Mulligan also joined the group, wanting to avenge their sister’s death, to remove all trace of Peter Landry from this cursed forest.

  Vic Morgan was moved by this massive arrival of men, fathers, brothers, and sons who refused to accept the shedding of blood, and he had to pull himself together. He bent his head and cleared his throat before speaking, something he had to do, since it had been decided that he was to be in charge of all the operations. By seven o’clock all the sectors had been mapped out and distributed among the teams come together over a glass of Coke or ginger ale. Each knew what was to be done the following day.

  The second search day was hot, exha
usting, and from the first to the thirteenth sector laid out by Morgan and Ménard the day before, you heard men snorting and swearing, men bursting out laughing, and sticks striking the earth or turning it over while the ferns rustled and the birds went silent, frightened by this invasion of animals grunting and slicing at the ground.

  At the end of the afternoon those animals emerged from the woods, smelly and dirty, a thrush began to sing, and the campground was again overrun. With the consent of Conrad Plamondon, the owner, a few women had spread plastic cloths over the tables, where they’d set up cold drinks, little cakes made by Stella McBain, the pastry queen, sandwiches, macaroni and potato salads, stuffed eggs, waiting for the men’s return the way you await that of soldiers. When, two by two, they came through the campground gate, the women rushed up, seeking news.

  Almost all the sectors had been gone over, except those covering Moose Trap and its cliffs. As the majority of the men went back to work in the city during the week, the most fearless and athletic among them would head up there the following Saturday. While swallowing a sandwich or a little stuffed roll, they gave an account of the day. The hunt had not been good, which was in itself reassuring news, a sign that the past was not eternal and couldn’t indefinitely cause harm to the present. Only Valère Grégoire and Henri Lacroix’s team brought back a trophy, a bear trap similar to the one that had torn into Zaza Mulligan’s leg. The contraption was instantly transferred to the back of Grégoire’s pick-up, and he took responsibility for getting rid of it. Someone suggested that the police should be notified, but what could the police do with an old trap, since young Mulligan had died accidentally? Once this dismal object was out of sight, things became more relaxed, and they could all do justice to the meal prepared by the women in the kitchens of Hope Jamison and Jocelyne Ménard, where a mood of happy confusion had reigned all afternoon between the steaming dishes, the children slamming doors and wanting to taste, the gossip surrounding TV and film stars. One by one the plates and platters were emptied, the pitchers of fruit juice, the coolers filled with bottles submerged in ice water that cooled hot hands and damp brows. They discussed the baseball season and the performance of the Boston Red Sox while munching on sticks of celery. They talked about politics, gardening, woodcutting, forgetting little by little the drama at the source of this little gathering that was much like a village fair.

  After the meal, the campground resembled a battlefield. The grass was flattened, paper plates littered the ground, along with plastic glasses and paper napkins the women gathered up before heading home on the arms of their husbands, their sons, their brothers. In all the Boundary cottages that night, that of the Lacroix, the Cochranes, the Jamisons, the Duchamps and the Maheux, they basked in the satisfaction of a job well done, treating themselves to a much-deserved beer. Even Florence Duchamp, who only drank at Christmas and New Year’s, allowed herself a glass of Labatt 50 that reddened her cheeks and flushed the little circle, her third eye she said, laughing, that marred her otherwise white brow. Afterwards, all lights were turned off. Boundary and its children were able to sleep in peace.

  Chauves-Souris Falls pours down on the west side of Moose Trap between Brian Larue’s cottage and that of the Tanguays, where several streams converge to form Spider River, given that name by the woodcutters because of the way the water spreads wide as it flows down the mountain, more like a witch’s messy head of hair than a spider once the leaves are down and you can see the channels carved out by the thaw. Despite all the prohibitions still being imposed on us, not to stray far from the cottages, not to take Otter Trail, nor Weasel Trail, not to scratch our noses after five o’clock, my parents agreed that I could spend the weekend at Emma’s, after drawing up a list of dictates as long as the Green Giant’s arms put end to end. Saturday night Emma led me to the falls, telling her father we were going to play in his cabin behind the cottage, while I scrunched the list sticking out of my pocket into a ball and swallowed it whole.

  In bright daylight there was nothing threatening about the place, the water swirled to the foot of the falls and surged between the rocks of Spider River in a commotion that resembled a sustained round of applause. The sun set the wet stones to sparkling, and you could sometimes spot a fish working its way through the labyrinth. It was a place where life accelerated past the static trees, making you want to run, to leap from stone to stone, to plunge head first into the cascade of clear water. After nightfall, however, the ambience changed. There was no more applause, just gusts of wind at the very heart of the falls. In the black coulee opened up by the river there drifted eddies of foam, the only bright zones on moonless nights, looking like drool from the maw of a prehistoric animal. Among the trees lining the shore, you no longer wanted to run. You held your breath to pick out the forest’s tangle of sounds, lost to the wind, captive to clamour.

  About a hundred feet from shore, two recently fallen trees formed a shelter invisible from the path. That’s where Emma led me, into this burrow where you had to bend double, your nose to your shoes, if you didn’t want to scrape your head on the rough trunks. We would have been more comfortable in the open air, side by side on a log, but Emma saw spies everywhere. So we invented a new lotus position, the upside-down lotus, so as to be able to emerge with all our limbs intact, and we talked about the men who’d searched the mountain all day, armed with sticks and lances to scare off an animal with no name, a dead animal but one still roaring. Emma and I watched them entering the forest, wondering if they’d capture the animal and its babies, then we saw them come out towards the end of the afternoon, tired and dripping with sweat, as the barbecues were being lit. My father was with them, wearing an old hat like that of Pat Tanguay. I ran towards him with Emma, and stopped short when I saw that there was dried blood on his hands and clothes and on the hands of Gilles Ménard, whose pale face was back, the mask that he’d never lose altogether, with the folds at the corners of his eyes and mouth.

  Emma’s father, who’d been part of the search the previous Sunday, went to meet them to see what their hunt had turned up. My father immediately took him aside, probably to tell him where the blood came from, then he said goodbye to me, enjoy yourself mite, as if nothing were up. Before I had time to reply he turned his back with lightning speed, sent flying a few bits of gravel at his feet, and in a flash was out of sight behind Valère Grégoire’s pick-up, as filthy as his headwear. Brian Larue, who’d had a clear view of my father’s evasive manoeuvre, took us into the cottage, Emma and me, repeating that there was nothing to worry about, that the blood was not blood, just mud from the red earth of the Moose Trap ravines, a clay that stained everything it touched, skin, hair, stream water. Might as well take us for a couple of twits.

  Under the fallen trees at the Chauves-Souris Falls, Emma, half her hair twisted around a root, asked me if I’d seen Zaza Mulligan’s blood, if I’d noticed traces of it on Gilles Ménard’s shirt the night he’d arrived at our place all in a panic. We didn’t for a minute believe Emma’s father’s explanations, which my father himself would have given us had they been true. The two men had conspired to keep us in the dark. All the adults had been lying to us for two weeks, just feeding us information from a tiny eye dropper good only for dim-witted Lilliputians, whenever we said something that made them afraid we were inventing any old thing. They wanted to protect us, but only succeeded in stoking the fears of some and the curiosity of others, who made up their own stories, their own versions of the facts. Emma and I, we belonged to the second category, those who dreamed up anything at all, preferring to rack our brains rather than to wait around like idiots for our parents to decide to talk to us. Huddled under the trees with Brownie, our eyes as wide as quarters, we were alert for sounds, for furtive movements in the high branches, conjuring outlandish stories in which Moose Trap in its turn conspired against men. In those stories, Pete Landry wasn’t dead. He emerged at night from the flames licking at his shack, his arms in the air, lava flowing from his scorched
lips, and kept on setting traps that were no longer meant for animals, but for young women called Tanager, Tanager of Bondrée, Zaza of Boundary. That’s what our fathers were looking for in the forest, Tanager’s traps.

  After raising the possibility that the blood staining my father’s hands was perhaps that of a young girl who’d lost consciousness in the jaws of a trap, we curled up to one another, not difficult to do given our cramped quarters, and observed the river in silence. In front of our shelter bats skimmed the black water, more restless than butterflies, sowing death so as not to die. For several minutes we watched the coming and going of the little animals that had lent their name to the falls, wondering if Brownie’s growling was meant for the bats or some demon associated with the flight of those mammals found so often in horror stories. Emma didn’t dare admit that she was afraid, me even less, but when Brownie darted out of the shelter for no apparent reason, we decided to go back before Emma’s father discovered that we weren’t in the cabin. Two hypocrites not wanting to admit that their teeth were starting to knock against their palates.

  In the path winding towards the lake, following the twists and turns of the river, the bats stayed with us along with the roar of the waterfall, like a north wind moving us on in the midst of a storm but only showing itself in a nebulous billowing of the waves, captive to waters that would be torn to shreds when the falls could no longer contain its rage.

  The night was clouded over and we could barely see two feet in front of us, forced to grope our way while the bats, better prepared than two girls for navigating in the dead of night, flitted about without encountering any obstacle. Where the path bordered a bog, one of Emma’s running shoes got stuck in the mud and she had to go down on her knees to extricate it. Listen, she whispered, listen, I think someone’s following us. Set on edge by his mistress’s nervousness, or by what inspired it, Brownie emitted a weak yap and began growling again in the direction of the darkness that had closed in behind us. It’s all in your head, I replied to reassure myself, but there really were sounds above the path that could as well have come from the tread of a man as of an animal. Put on your shoe, we’re getting out of here, I whispered in my turn, then there was a loud crack, too loud to have been caused by the flight of a hare or a raccoon. Brownie, who was also scared stiff, then started to bark wildly, a sign that we were right to be afraid. Run, Emma, run! And we ran, tripping over roots, stones, mounds of earth, until we finally saw the gleam of the lake. Run, Emma, faster! Brownie on our heels, we burst into the cottage, where Brian Larue was preparing two glasses of Quik to take to us in Emma’s cabin. He asked us where we’d come from like that, and Emma said nowhere, we’d just been running for the fun of it, and we’d drink our Quik in her room.