Pierre looked from Charbonneau to the river. “Then, just when they were ready to give up, they heard the boy’s voice coming from under the ground. They dug as fast as they could, scraping a hole with a hatchet blade. For a while the crying was so loud it seemed as if they could reach down and touch the boy’s hand. They kept digging, but the voice drifted off. It moved away from the river, staying deep underground. When they finally gave up, the cries were coming from beneath that cliff back there, and the voice was growing fainter by the moment.”
Charbonneau stared at the river for a long time after the story was done. Pierre finally broke the silence, asking, “Do you believe that could really happen?”
With his eyes still fixed on the river, Charbonneau replied slowly, “You mean, is it true?”
Pierre nodded.
“All I can say for sure is that I heard the story told by lots and lots of fellows. That gives it a sort of truth, I guess. The more I learn about these rivers, the more I realize there’s hundreds of things we’ll never understand. There’s too many moods, too many feelings that shift with the seasons. All we can ever know for sure is the changes.”
At that moment La Petite interrupted, asking, “Time to voyage?” Charbonneau rose and tapped his pipe against the tree trunk.
The French River was in a quiet, low-water mood, totally unlike the bright roaring that had washed La Londe and the lost child of the legend to their graves. After they started paddling again, Pierre thought about the wild river, and he listened for that little Ojibwa boy’s cries.
CHAPTER 22
The Last Portage
THE DAYS MELDED together, and once they reached the Ottawa, home seemed within reach. Though Lachine was still three hundred miles distant, Pierre was confident their trip would be over soon.
Their first morning on the Ottawa, Pierre spoke with Charbonneau during breakfast. “It’s just a downstream coast from here, eh?”
“Well,” Charbonneau said, glancing at the sluggish river, “that depends.”
“On what? Shouldn’t we go twice as fast downstream?”
“We should, but the current may be weaker than you remember.”
True to Charbonneau’s word, the country got progressively drier. The river was a mere trickle in places, and their progress was as slow as their upstream travel had been in the spring. Many of the rapids were unsafe to run, and short stretches they’d tracked or paddled demi-chargé in May were now portages.
Pierre suddenly felt as if he’d never get home. The miles seemed like years. Images of Lachine grew hazy, and the harder he tried to fix the pictures in his mind, the faster they slipped away. Sometimes in the middle of a paddle stroke, a face would flash before him. With the suddenness of a scarf pulled from a magician’s sleeve, his mother or father or Celeste would appear. Yet as quickly as the shapes become whole, they faded.
The vanishing scared Pierre. There was no calling the faces back once they were gone. It reminded him too much of the way he felt about La Londe.
As they worked their way downriver, Pierre thought more and more about his father. He replayed the wood-chopping accident in his mind and worried about the summer of pain that Father must have suffered. He feared that the jumbled images in his head meant something bad was to come. To forget his worries, he tried reading La Vérendrye’s journal during the long summer evenings, but the explorer’s stories about his search for a western passage to the sea and the death of his son on Massacre Island made Pierre more homesick than ever.
Charbonneau noticed his impatience one evening as they sat before the fire. “If you want a thing too badly it never comes,” he said.
“It shows that much?”
“To survive,” Charbonneau continued, “you must look on the journey the same as your paddling.”
“But the time goes so slowly.”
“That is the sweetness of the traveling life. Time is frozen by the journey. While most men worry away their lives, counting coins and filling ledgers, we voyageurs live with the magic of the open water.” Charbonneau looked from the river to the distant hills as he talked. “We travel as the sun and wind allow. All the places we’ve been are with us every moment of our lives.”
Just then Michel Larocque walked by the campfire. Pierre teased him. “So how are the legs holding up, old fellow?”
“Old fellow?” Larocque repeated, stopping to glare at Pierre.
“That’s right.” Pierre grinned. “I’ve heard that jumpers age real fast if they don’t get their practice.”
“We shall see.” Larocque immediately turned to gather wood.
When the fire was roaring, Larocque approached Pierre. “After you, monsieur,” he said, gesturing toward the dancing flames.
Pierre stood and stretched his legs. Knowing it was best not to hesitate, he trotted to the far end of the camp. Then he turned back toward the fire, sprinting hard. He leaped. Fearing for a moment that he’d jumped too soon, Pierre wheeled his arms and extended his feet straight out. The flames singed his calves, but he landed clear of the embers and rolled immediately back to his feet.
The crewmen cheered. Larocque laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “A fine leap, Pierre. I see our hard portaging has toughened your legs as well as your back.”
As Larocque and a dozen other men jumped the fire, Pierre thought back to the night when La Londe and Beloît had rolled in the ashes and tried to beat each other senseless. Though it was only a month or so ago, it seemed as if a lifetime had passed.
Time reeled backward as the brigade shot the turbulent Roche Capitaine and made the long carries at Des Joachims and the Grand Calumet. Though it did little to quiet Pierre’s mind, they drew ever closer to home, leaving Chats Falls, Deschenes, and the Chaudières behind.
On the Long Sault, just two days shy of home, they met one of the few brigades still heading north. The outfit was bound for Mackinac and the leader of the group stopped to ask Charbonneau about the water level on the upper reaches of the river. Pierre shouldered his parcels, anxious to complete what promised to be the final carry of the trip.
When Pierre arrived on the shore of Two Mountain Lake, the last group in a northbound brigade was just starting out. Two grinning men knelt before an open pack. One fellow said, “This should fix young Nolin,” while the second man stuffed something into the blankets at the top of the pack. He chuckled as he pulled the straps down tight.
Pierre knew what they were planning. He tossed down his parcels and hurried back up the trail. He would find the boy and warn him about the trick.
When Pierre finally met a timid young voyageur he asked, “Are you Nolin?”
The boy, startled that a stranger would know his name, nodded.
Pierre was about to say “It might be wise to check your next pack,” but he stopped. As he studied the determination in the boy’s eyes, Pierre suddenly saw himself on his own first portage. In that instant he realized it would be wrong to take the thing from this boy that was his right to earn. So instead of warning him, Pierre nodded curtly, just as he knew the old-timers would, and said, “Have a good journey.”
Then Pierre was off to complete his final carry.
CHAPTER 23
The Woodpile
THE BRIGADE ARRIVED in Lachine on a quiet August evening. Once the pelts were delivered to the company warehouse, Pierre shouldered his pack and headed for home.
Just before he turned onto the road that led to his cabin, he approached Dr. Guilliard’s house. Pierre closed his eyes and shivered as he recalled the mad dash he’d made last spring.
“La Page! Pierre La Page!” Guilliard called out.
Pierre looked up, surprised to see the doctor, his wife, and Celeste all sitting on the front porch.
“Good evening, Doctor,” Pierre said, touching his cap.
“Is McKay’s brigade back already?” Guilliard asked.
“We just got in this evening, sir.” Pierre paused at Guilliard’s front gate.
“Did you ha
ve a good trip?” the doctor asked.
“Yes …” Pierre paused, thinking about how impossible it would be to reduce the last three months of his life to a single answer. For now he would leave it simple. “Yes,” he repeated. “We had a fine trip.”
“You must stop by sometime,” Mrs. Guilliard interjected, “and tell us about your travels.”
“I’d like that,” Pierre said, smiling at Celeste. “Hello, Celeste,” he said.
Celeste blushed and lowered her eyes before she spoke. He remembered her as bold and self-confident, yet today she looked pale and shy. Since Celeste’s reply was impossible to hear, Pierre simply smiled. “Nice seeing you folks,” he said, “but I really have to get home.”
“Of course,” Dr. Guilliard said, “but do stop by again.”
“Thank you, sir. I will.”
Pierre heard the ax from a long way off. Even before he got within sight of the cabin, the ringing of the steel told him his father was splitting oak. As he walked up the trail, he recalled the day last spring when he had sprinted down this same path.
He balked at the thought that it had happened just last May. He shook his head and wondered how time could play such tricks. It seemed as if half his life had passed since that day. Just then he heard a bark, and his dog, Pepper, ran out of the brush. Pierre knelt and greeted his old friend. The whole time he petted the dog, he could still hear the steady ringing of Father’s ax.
At the edge of the clearing Pierre laid down his pack. His moccasins were silent as he and Pepper crept toward the cabin to surprise his father. They were screened by a tall pine until they were nearly to the woodshed, but as soon as Pierre tiptoed around the corner of the cabin, his father looked up.
Reacting to some small movement, or sensing his presence out of instinct, as woodsmen often do, Father looked over his shoulder. The ax was suspended high over his head. In a single motion he released the blade and pivoted toward his son. Pierre sucked in his breath and closed his eyes tight. He could see the ax slashing into his father’s leg.
Instead he heard the solid thunk of wood, and he looked up again. By then, Father was halfway to him. Before Father had a chance to shout, Pierre put his finger to his lips and shook his head, signaling to keep his arrival a secret. Teary-eyed, Father crushed him in a long, silent hug.
“Let me have a look at you,” Father whispered, stepping back to hold him at arm’s length. As they stood eye to eye, Pierre was surprised to see he was nearly as tall as his father.
They shook hands, and Father raised his eyebrows when he felt the new strength in Pierre’s grip. He grinned like a man who had found a son long given up for dead. Pierre was worried, though, by the strange way his father shook his head from side to side.
“Is something wrong?” Pierre asked, but his father just stared. “I said, ‘Is there something wrong?’”
Father chuckled, saying, “Not something, but everything.”
“What do you mean?” Pierre asked. “Is Mother all right?”
“No. No. Nothing like that.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“Is it not wrong to send a boy off and have him never come back?”
“I’m back.”
“But you’re not the same.” Father studied the confusion in his son’s face. He concluded finally by saying, “No. Somewhere along the trail you buried my boy and resurrected a man in his place.”
Father was laughing now and giving his son a second hug. Pierre had trouble believing he’d changed that much. From boy to man, he thought, in a single summer? He looked over his shoulder toward the house to see if anyone had heard the commotion.
As Father stepped back, Pierre couldn’t help staring at the stub of his father’s thumb, stretched tight as it was with skin that looked smoother and shinier than the rest of his hand.
Father saw him staring at the injured thumb and suddenly lifted it level with his son’s eyes. “You have nothing to worry about where this little stump is concerned,” he said. “It healed quick and never slowed me down even half a lick. Feel it.” He paused, tapping the stub on Pierre’s shoulder. “It works just as good as a regular thumb, and it’s tough as a chunk of seasoned cordwood.” Still grinning, Father thumped his scarred appendage twice against the front of his own thigh to prove his point.
“Why don’t you take a rest?” Pierre asked, nodding in the direction of the woodpile, “and let me finish up the splitting?”
Father frowned. “This is no time to chop wood. We’ve got some serious celebrating to do.”
“Once you step inside the house,” Pierre said, “I suspect it won’t take Mother long to figure out the wood isn’t splitting itself.” Father nodded then, agreeing it would be a fine joke.
He studied his son’s weather-toughened face while Pierre walked to the wood block and pulled the ax free with one hand. It felt good to balance the familiar hickory handle in his hands. The dark, oiled grain was smooth against his callused palms. As he hefted the ax, Pierre was surprised that it felt no heavier than a paddle blade.
He set a block of wood in place and swung. With the flat crack of a branch snapping off in midwinter cold, the blade sheared the oak block in two. The perfect halves fell onto the packed earth with a thud and rocked for an instant before they were still. Pierre smiled when he saw how deeply the ax head was buried in the chopping block. Then, with a grin that bettered his son’s, Father hurried off toward the cabin.
In The Broken Blade, thirteen-year-old Pierre was seasoned by his first trip as a voyageur, spending the summer of 1800 paddling and portaging a canoe twenty-four hundred miles into the French Canadian wilderness. Now he’s fourteen, ready to become an hivernant, to “winter over,” trapping and trading furs with a crew in the north.
An hivernant faces cold, isolation, and hunger. For Pierre, one of the biggest challenges is spending months in close quarters with Beloit, the teasing bowman. But an Ojibwe brave welcomes Pierre into his family and opens up a new world as they hunt and explore the woods together. And McHenry, Pierre’s commander, offers Pierre his love of books.
Wintering proves an invigorating adventure in this companion to the award-winning The Broken Blade, as Pierre earns the hivernant’s rewards: self-reliance, endurance, and the chance to share in the jokes, celebrations, and tragedies of his community.
Available now from Yearling Books
WILLIAM DURBIN is a Minneapolis-born teacher and writer who has lived in the lake country of northeastern Minnesota for many years. He has supervised writing research projects for the National Council of Teachers of English, the Bingham Trust for Charity, and Middlebury College. He teaches English at a small rural high school and composition at a community college. The Broken Blade is his first novel.
Published by
Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Reader
a division of
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1997 by William C. Durbin
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eISBN: 978-0-307-75673-2
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