The Broken Blade

by William Durbin

  The more he thought about the advice, the more foolish it sounded. He’d never made a job easy by forgetting. Forgetting made his mother angry. How many times had he been sent out after supper to finish a chore he’d forgotten? “It isn’t fair for the chickens to go hungry because you’re lazy,” she’d say.

  The brigade finally stopped for breakfast at the base of a rapids. There was a short but steep portage. As the canoes coasted up to the landing, Pierre noticed that each man briefly doffed his cap. He looked up and saw a series of faded red crosses standing on top of the hill. He’d heard about these crosses left in memory of voyageurs who’d drowned, but he’d never seen one.

  After the men unloaded, Pierre studied the white trough that roared down the boulder-strewn channel. He was awed that anyone would ever attempt such a run.

  He looked back up the hill and asked La Londe, “How many crosses are there?”

  “Nineteen as of last fall.”

  “That many died right here?”

  La Londe nodded. In the pool below the rapids, Pierre watched a beaver-gnawed stick bobbing in the foam. It was easy to imagine a dead man, facedown in the flotsam, spinning in a slow circle.

  “Why would anyone ever want to try those rapids?”

  “It’s a tough carry,” was all La Londe said.

  “Voyageurs don’t try it anymore, do they?”

  “It is forbidden by the company.” The flat tone of La Londe’s voice hinted that this was a policy not always obeyed.

  Pierre pictured himself alone in a canoe hurtling down the white channel, flailing with his paddle. “You’ve never run it, have you?”

  There was a long pause. When La Londe finally spoke, his eyes were fixed on the red crosses. “It’s a tough carry,” he repeated.

  Breakfast was the same as dinner and the same as every meal would be for the next six weeks—boiled corn and salt pork. Pierre nibbled at the first bite and only then realized his hunger. He devoured his heaping plateful, not caring whether it was corn or oats or hay. Food helped drive the paddles, and he needed strength.

  When it was time to portage, Pierre carefully inspected both his parcels. Catching him with his hand beneath the pack flaps, La Petite teased, “What you fishing for, Pierre? I think you have better luck if you try the river.”

  “You know what I’m looking for, La Petite,” Pierre said. “No one’s tricking me again with an overloaded pack.”

  “So, I will have to find another pony to place my wagers on?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, here’s your slice of the pie.” With a big laugh that echoed up the rocky channel, he tossed Pierre a coin purse.

  Then, as Pierre was getting ready to hoist up his pack, La Londe took him by the arm. “And here’s a little present from me.”

  La Londe, his blue eyes lit with excitement, handed Pierre a sheath knife. The handle was carved caribou horn, and it had a moosehide sheath decorated with colored beading.

  “I couldn’t take such a fine—”

  “You deserve it. You won that wager for us.”

  “But this is too much,” Pierre protested.

  “I promised you a share. Besides, I made it myself. It’s a winter hobby of mine. A knife means more to a boy than a sack of coins, right?”

  Pierre nodded, awed by the gleam of the honed edge.

  “Besides, we white-hairs got to stick together,” La Londe grinned, ruffling Pierre’s hair. “Just don’t cut your hand off. Your mother would skin my hide.”

  When Pierre had both ninety-pound parcels in place, he was amazed at how light they felt. The balance was so much better than the pack they’d tricked him with. That one rode low on his hips and put a strain on his back and neck. These sat high and let him carry the weight with his legs.

  The rest of the day passed quietly in a mix of brief paddling stints and work with the tracking lines. Most of the men were suffering from the previous night’s celebration, and they looked peaked. Beloit, complaining so loudly that the whole brigade could hear, claimed his mouth tasted “like the inside of a British boot.”

  The only excitement occurred late in the day, when La Petite’s bowman suddenly drew out his North West gun and fired toward the near shore. There was a furious flapping of wings, and after the smoke from the musket charge drifted downriver, Pierre saw a duck floating on the water. The canoemen cheered when the man tossed his kill to the cook, Andre Bellegarde.

  “Meat for the cooking pot,” La Londe called out.

  Emile, grinning hungrily, yelled, “Duck soup!”

  Bellegarde stood up in his canoe, limp carcass in hand, and bowed dramatically to his benefactor. “Fine shooting, monsieur,” he said.

  CHAPTER 8

  Night of the Kettle Dance

  THAT NIGHT THE brigade camped at the head of the Long Sault. Though Pierre was glad to have those tough portages behind him, he was nervous when Charbonneau bragged about how far they would paddle the next day: “Tomorrow we hit a sweet stretch of river—not a single shoal or rapids to slow us down. We cover forty miles easy.”

  That meant steady paddling with his blistered hands. As they carried the packs up to the campsite, Pierre asked Emile, “Can we really paddle that far in one day?”

  “Charbonneau starts fast,” Emile said with a smile, tugging at his curly sideburns, “and once we hit the big water, he’ll go even faster.” He looked at Pierre’s hands. “How they holding up?”

  Pierre shrugged. He didn’t want to admit that his fingers were too sore to straighten.

  While the light was still strong, Pierre helped Emile gum the canoe and fix the wattape, the cedar root lacing on the canoe seams that had frayed during their upstream drags. Every canoe carried spare wattape and pine gum, as well as a rolled sheet of birch bark for repairing leaks and tears.

  Later Pierre wandered down to the shore and looked north. Above the horizon rose the forbidding, glacier-scoured hills of the Canadian Shield. “So what do you think of her?” La Londe asked. He relaxed on a nearby log.

  “It looks like tough country.”

  “Tough and wild,” La Londe agreed. “That ridge will lie to the north for our whole trip to Grand Portage.”

  Pierre nodded. His father had told him of the famous outcroppings known as the Laurentian Hills. They marked the point where the rivers started flowing north to Hudson Bay.

  “When the first explorers came searching for a trade route to China, that highland crushed their hopes, but to us it’s home.”

  “Home?” Pierre questioned, staring at the cold hills.

  La Londe laughed at Pierre’s frown. “I remember the first night I camped here. I was scared stiff. A fourteenyear-old short-hair away from home for the very first time, I sat down on that ledge right over there and bawled my eyes out.”

  Pierre frowned. He wondered if La Londe was making up a story to make him feel good.

  “It’s true,” La Londe insisted, seeing the doubt in Pierre’s eyes. “That spring my old man booted me out of the house. One day he said, ‘Time you got out and made something of yourself.’ Next thing you know, my papers were signed, and I was paddling north.”

  “Your father never asked if you wanted to sign on?”

  “No.” La Londe laughed at Pierre’s astonishment. “He was a storekeeper, and nine kids were too many to feed. So out I went.”

  “Just like that?”

  “There’s no need to feel sorry for me,” he said, patting Pierre gently on the shoulder. “I headed north that year, and I never did go back. In a season I fell in love with this life. Wouldn’t trade it for anything now. Besides”—La Londe smiled as he stood and waved a hand in the direction of the men who were clustered around the campfire—“who could ever ask for a nicer family than those fellows?”

  Alone, Pierre watched the sun disappear in pink and purple trails. Cold crept down from the darkening hills, and steam rose off the water. A blackbird called upriver.

  Pierre thought of his moth
er back home in Lachine. She would be warming a pot of tea on the woodstove about now. From the time he was a little boy he’d taken a cup of tea with his parents before he went to bed. When he was small the tea was mostly milk, but it made him feel like a grown-up. Later there was a book or a story before they tucked him in for the night.

  When Pierre walked back to camp, he found Bellegarde at the fire, preparing the evening’s “feast.” The big cooking pot, filled with water, pork fat, and corn, was propped between two flat rocks and just beginning to steam. The air was heavy with smoke. Bellegarde knelt, whistling, making quick work of the duck. He tossed feathers in all directions. Pierre smiled when he imagined what his mother would think of the cook’s crude technique.

  It was hard for Pierre not to stare at the cook’s scarred face. Bellegarde was a thin man with greasy hair and small, close-set eyes. He was the oldest man in the brigade and, according to La Petite, the most experienced, having traveled down the Fraser River to Canada’s western coast. His work as a cook was “a step toward retirement.”

  “Is it true,” Pierre asked, “that you’ve canoed to Athabasca?”

  “It is,” Bellegarde replied, never taking his eyes off the duck. “And true that I’ve paddled all the way to the Pacific. And true that I’ve spent many a winter with nothing but a trading gun to bring down my supper.”

  “You wintered that far west?”

  “I’ve traveled twice to New Caledonia, and I’ve married eight good wives, too. I surely haven’t wasted my whole life with pork-eaters such as these,” he said, jerking his head and spitting into the fire. Men who went no farther north than Grand Portage were sometimes called pork-eaters, out of scorn.

  “I’ve seen sights that’d turn your blood cold,” he stated, as he laid the duck across a log and sawed off its head and feet with his hunting knife.

  Next Bellegarde crouched before the fire and passed the bird back and forth through the flames a few times to singe off the pinfeathers. Then, in a voice loud enough for half the camp to hear, he announced, “Now to flavor our soup.”

  To Pierre’s horror, Bellegarde tossed the blackened carcass, entrails and all, into the cooking pot. Pierre coughed, and the cook turned with a grin. “What’s this, young man? Is my butchering not fancy enough for you?”

  “So, Bellegarde,” Charbonneau interrupted from the far side of the fire, “which one of your wives taught you such a recipe for duck? I bet she was old and blind.”

  A chorus of laughs rose around the fire.

  “She was lots prettier than you fellows,” Bellegarde scoffed, “and she could see plenty good.”

  Pierre stared at Bellegarde, wondering what else he planned to throw into his kettle. Jean Beloît, who was sitting on a flat rock, teased Pierre. “You never want to waste the guts, boy. That’s the tastiest part.”

  Beloît saw Pierre grimace, so he pushed it one step further. “Just ask the Sioux. Those fellows love the innards. After a buffalo kill they’ll fight for the first bite of raw liver. Same with the intestines. I’ve seen braves chew their way through a gut pile like kids at a taffy pull.”

  Wide-eyed, he raked his hands through an imaginary mound of entrails. “There’s hundreds of feet,” he continued, “and it stretches so far that a man can start at either end and …”

  When Pierre jumped up, Beloît feigned surprise. “What’s wrong?”

  As Pierre knelt behind a big balsam tree and emptied his stomach, he could hear Beloît bragging, “I think something make little Grandpa sick.”

  Pierre hated that stupid cackling voice. He heard La Londe stick up for him. “What’d you do to the poor boy, let him look at you? That’d make anybody sick.”

  Pierre felt ashamed. As bad as the nickname “Grandpa” was, “poor boy” was even worse.

  Later, when the men gathered around the kettle to fill their plates, Pierre walked back toward the fire. McKay took his place at the head of the line, and the other crewmen fell in behind him. Though Pierre didn’t feel like eating, he knew he could never endure forty miles of upstream paddling tomorrow without food. It was a mystery to him how these men could work so hard, living on only two meals and pipe smoke.

  He took a place near the end of the line, trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible. When his turn finally came, Bellegarde ladled a big pile of soupy corn onto his plate.

  Just when it looked as if Pierre would be left to eat in peace, Beloît crowed, “I see why they call this one Grandpa. He wiser than his years. How many young fellows be smart enough to know the best comes last? It’s a clever fellow who waits until the pot is almost empty and the duck parts are settled to the bottom.”

  Pierre just smiled and set down his food without looking at it. “Here,” he said to Bellegarde, “let me help. It’s not fair that the cook always has to eat last.”

  Astonished by such unexpected consideration, Bellegarde accepted Pierre’s offer. As Pierre loaded up Belle-garde’s plate, the proud cook turned toward the fire, declaring to anyone who would listen, “Finally we have a man among us who knows how to treat Andre.”

  Pierre served the rest of the men. When it was Beloît’s turn, he pointed to the boy’s ladle. “Look,” he said, “our little lady friend has found a tool he can handle.” Pierre’s ears burned, but he said nothing.

  Beloît laughed his way to a seat on a rock next to La Londe and began eating. Pierre watched Beloît as he served the last men. It took him longer to eat than the others, because he talked the whole time. Bits of food fell into his lap or got caught in his beard, but he didn’t care.

  Just when Pierre was convinced that Beloît would never finish his meal, the man took a big scoop from his borrowed plate, saying, “This is what I call corn soup. It tastes like poetry, it does.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Charbonneau said. “You wouldn’t know a poem from a pack sack.”

  Beloît shoveled the heaping spoonful in and bit down hard. But suddenly he was spitting the food onto the ground. “Achh,” he growled, hacking and spitting a second time.

  “What’s the matter?” La Londe asked. “Can’t you stomach that elegant meat?” The rest of the crew turned to see what had caused the commotion.

  Beloît searched the ground frantically. A moment later he paused and slowly held up the bright orange foot of a duck.

  “Who’s had his hands in the cooking pot?”

  Several men grinned, but no one said anything. “I’ll have his ears, I will,” Beloît said. As he spoke, he fingered the hilt of the knife that hung at his waist.

  Pierre could no longer contain himself and burst into a peal of laughter. Beloît rubbed his eyes and squinted. “You?”

  The whole company joined in Pierre’s laughter. La Londe, his white hair shaking, clapped Beloît on the shoulder, saying, “That’s one on you, hivernant”

  Beloît glared across the fire, still touching the bone handle of his knife. Pierre imagined what his ears would look like floating in the cooking pot.

  “What’s the matter, Jean?” Charbonneau called. “I’ve heard the Sioux regard duck’s feet as a rare delicacy.”

  That was enough to bring a half smile to Beloît’s face. As he grinned, he tossed the webbed foot toward Pierre, saying, “You such a good cook’s helper, I share it with you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Pierre said in mock politeness as the foot rolled to the edge of the fire, “but I’ve had my fill.”

  When Beloît laughed again, Pierre knew he was safe, but his heart was racing as if he’d run a long way. What would he have done if the evil man had unsheathed his knife?

  He finally sat down to eat. The corn and duck and salt pork were delicious, sweetened by his revenge.

  Pierre was ready for bed. He needed rest if he wanted to survive the next day’s paddling with his aching arms and blistered hands. But just as Pierre was reaching for his blanket, La Petite shouted, “It’s time for the kettle dance,” and there was a great commotion throughout the camp.

>   Without another word, kegs were opened and two sacks were placed beside the fire. La Petite, as a senior member of the brigade, stood on one sack, while Emile Duval stood on the other. Each held a kettle under his arm.

  Pierre watched as Emile, dressed in deerskin leggings, a long shirt, a sash, and a feathered cap, began prancing in a half circle and singing:

  We leave, good hearts, our loves behind,

  For a parting to span three seasons.

  But voyageurs born, we journey to live,

  And spit in the face of danger.

  Duval paused then, and the rest of the crew took up the rousing chorus:

  We start the bold traverse today,

  Away, brave friends, away.

  For the safety of our company pray.

  Away, brave friends, away.

  La Petite stepped forward, dressed in a blue cloak and red sash. Carrying a beaded bag, he moved about slowly and sang in a big, sweet voice:

  Dark will our nights be and cold our couches.

  The devil, by day, will seize our blades.

  Over portages long, and saults and streams,

  With death-stalked hearts we sing.

  The crew joined in as before, and the singers went on, taking turns for the next seven verses. The men laughed and clapped, and at the end of each verse, at least one man shrieked.

  Pierre, trying to shake the sleep from his eyes, studied the cavorting men and thought back over the hard upstream haul they’d made that day. Where does all their energy come from? he wondered, admiring La Londe’s high-kicking style.

  When Pierre was too tired to watch any longer, he rolled out his blanket under a canoe. The voices soon faded as he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.