Although he could barely feel his legs, he shuffled up the shoulder and stood in the exact spot where Réjean had been struck, placing his considerably smaller feet in the impressions of Réjean’s boots. He turned in a circle, taking it in: la route, les arbres, le ciel et la pluie. No Réjean. Anywhere. It seemed as though if he stayed there and kept looking, Réjean should materialize. But the thing he felt with absolute crystal certainty, in his marrow, was that Réjean was no more. He foggily recognized that he should call the police, but he lacked the capacity to put actions and ideas together. The world around him had grown white and empty, and as the rain spat loudly on his hat, he felt as though he were standing inside a yellow house, looking out a window at a world he was no longer a part of. He looked down at the gun in his palm. After some aimless fumbling, he managed to slide the gun under the flap of his pocket.
Martin glanced up and saw the Silverado sitting opposite him, but couldn’t look directly back at it, as it implored him for answers he couldn’t provide. Despite his stupor, he felt it was wrong to just climb into another man’s truck, but convention was meaningless now. Martin shuffled toward the Silverado until his fingertip just touched the door handle, then tapped it, surprised to be making contact with something solid. He closed his eyes and hoisted himself into the other world of the Silverado.
Among the many traits Martin admired about Réjean, one of the greatest was his tidiness. Réjean’s trade-ins were reliably returned in almost exactly the same condition he had bought them. Immaculate. They shared a love of order, but Martin felt Réjean wore it better. He stretched out his arms, laid both palms flat on the seats and caressed the upholstery. He was giving it a tender downward stroke when he noticed the brown paper bag. He reached down, then stopped. The truck was watching his every move, like a horse awaiting its fallen rider. His hand was hovering over the edge of the seat, halfway to the bag, when the reality of Réjean’s non-existence hit him again, reminding him of the world where he now lived, alone. He lunged for the bag and pulled apart the folded flap. It was a full-size brown grocery bag containing a lunch that could have fed a few men. The void inside Martin cried out. He thrust in his hand and pulled out a big waxed-paper package. Sandwiches. Four of them. Four! He took out one and examined it. The bread was soft and visibly homemade, the slices incongruous, with a crust that was darker and coarser than you saw in the store, but the bread itself…He had never seen bread so fluffy or white. Two thick slices of baloney poked out from its edges. He caressed the sandwich thoughtfully, sniffed it, closed his eyes, and replayed over and over Réjean’s big hand smacking his arm until he noticed he was squeezing the sandwich. Butter and plain yellow mustard oozed out around the slabs of baloney. Martin pictured the hand holding the knife that spread the butter and mustard, and panic began to simmer up from the chasm inside him. Without thinking, he stuffed half the sandwich into his mouth, breathing heavily as he chewed. He threw his head back against the seat and began to cry with his mouth closed, then stuffed the other half of the sandwich in his mouth and used his hand to hold the whole thing in. He dove for the Thermos on the passenger seat and tore the lid off, spilling coffee on himself. As it cascaded down his front, he snuffled in the wonderful dark smell. The aroma was rich, free of the industrial tang of the coffee at work. Jack Bureau had been a coffee drinker and Martin regretted never having been able to appreciate a beverage that smelled so good and for which his father had had such affection. He tilted his head back and opened his esophagus. He drank the wonderful smell, the smell of a house, the smell of a home. It wasn’t scalding, but was hot enough to be too hot. Martin glugged some back up, the back of his throat burning, swished it around his palate, and let it wash back down. He wiped his mouth with his wet sleeve, smearing sandwich and coffee across his face, and dug his hand back in the bag. He pulled out another waxed-paper package, wider than it was tall, ripping apart one layer of paper and then the next to reveal the brown-sugar-sprinkled expanse of a dozen date squares. Martin pried one out, dropping the rest in his lap, and held it up to his face, smelling it and smelling it again. He squooshed the middle so that some of the dates squeezed out, then daintily bit around the edges to even the dates up with the crust and took one giant bite. Then two. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so hungry.
The loss of Réjean made him feel that things were breaking up and drifting away outside of his control. Not just Réjean, but himself. He felt unwhole, unsolid, like his head and hands might float away like balloons. He stuffed another date square down his gullet, poured some more coffee into his mouth and down his chin, mingling with his tears, and forced down yet another date square. Then, breathing and gulping, he bunched up the lunch bag and dropped it on the floor, patted Colonel Weed’s gun in his pocket, and slid numbly from the driver seat, not even thinking to close the door.
On a tattered gold sofa, Réjean awoke in tremendous pain, with most of his legs dangling over the sofa’s arm. Through half-closed eyes, he first made out a purple wall, then a bearded man sitting in front of it in an armchair, smoking, reading a book with a sailboat on the cover. The gentle creak of the sofa springs snapped the man’s attention from his page. He sucked in the remainder of his cigarette, crushed it out in a teeming ashtray, and, with a grunt of inconvenience, disappeared behind a velvet curtain.
Réjean felt the clutch of a bandage around his ribs. When he went to touch it, he discovered his hands enveloped in a pair of gauze mittens. He held them up in front of his face, unable to remember having gotten hurt. Surely, with enough inspection, they would reveal the source of the injury. He was swaddled in several layers of blankets and topped with a goose-down duvet.
The bearded man returned with a cup of tea on a saucer. Réjean turned over gingerly on his side and cringed from the strain. The man pulled a coffee table up next to the sofa and set down the tea. Réjean reached absurdly for the cup with his bandaged hands, but couldn’t grasp it. The bearded man sat on the edge of the coffee table, lifted the cup to Réjean’s lips, and tilted it just enough so that Réjean could slurp some off the top.
“Merci,” said Réjean, sinking painfully back down to the divot created by his body.
The man rolled his eyes. “French…” he muttered, then glancing at Réjean’s bandaged hands, slightly softened his tone. “You feel okay?”
Réjean shrugged and grimaced. “Qu’est ce qui m’est arrivé?” he asked, holding up his hands.
“Ah, you don’t know,” said the man.
Réjean shook his head.
“Well, I can’t help you there. We found you, side of the road. You were lying in a ditch for a while. Maybe a few days. Smaller guy wouldn’t have made it. You got roughed up bad though, tell you that.”
Réjean thought hard, but came up with nothing like getting roughed up or lying in a ditch. He took his eyes on a trip around the room: the chipboard, the aimlessly suspended fabric, the Naugahyde bar, the nautical upright lamp behind the armchair where the bearded man had been reading. Réjean searched, but nothing had any meaning.
The man lit another cigarette and blew out the match. The smell of smoke provoked a warm familiarity in Réjean, and he watched as the plume dissipated in mid-air.
“Smoke?” said the man, and held out the white-and-gold pack, then looked at Réjean’s bandaged hands and mumbled, “Oh.” He took one out, lit it, and held it to Réjean’s lips. Réjean sucked in the smoke as he had seen the man do and coughed it out violently, lifting a padded hand to his side to keep his ribcage from bursting open.
“Kay,” said the man, placing the cigarette in the ashtray next to his own. He fed Réjean some more tea and alternately smoked both cigarettes himself. “The Colonel’s out just now,” he said, lifting the cup to Réjean’s lips. Then, remembering it was the thing to do, he said, “I’m JC.”
Réjean went to respond and couldn’t. He came up empty. “Je m’appelle…Je m’appelle…” Nothing. He didn’t know. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t recognize his own body.
He had been found at the side of the road like an old muffler.
Réjean recovered quickly at Colonel Weed’s on a diet of organ meat, cheese, and wine, and soon began doing odd jobs around the compound. He was sterilizing a cheese vat when JC pulled up next to him in the Colonel’s Dodge Dakota and said, “Hey, Serge, wanna go for a drive?”
Serge was the name the Colonel had given him, after a French singer he adored. The Colonel had always said that if he had had a son, that’s what he would have named him. This was the role Réjean was gradually taking on. He and the Colonel would have long, laughing discussions that JC could only imagine must be about French itself; the new guy didn’t know much else. But surely he must have been curious about his old life, whatever it was. Someone must have been looking for him. The Colonel had even offered to help, with the understanding that the police would not be notified. But as the weeks stretched on, and Réjean and the Colonel grew closer, Réjean’s curiosity dwindled. He didn’t have the feeling of there being something he needed to get back to. The Colonel encouraged the other men to include Serge in their regular activities and tried to impress upon them how much easier their jobs would be with him around. The men didn’t care for new things, though, and had never had much luck making friends—they barely tolerated each other—but they were happy to unload the heavy lifting. When the Colonel suggested to JC that he take Réjean along on a payment run, he grudgingly agreed.
Réjean climbed into the Dakota and his eyes grew wide.
“You never been in a truck, Serge?” JC asked.
Réjean shook his head. “Ch’pense pas.”
The shocks on the Dakota were bad. The Colonel swore that after this one, he would never buy another Dodge. From now on he would only buy Renaults.
JC decided to take the back road.
As they green-laned along at top speed, tumbling into potholes and careening over exposed tree roots, Réjean’s head banged regularly against the roof as he grabbed for the handle over the window. JC smoked, grinning to himself. But Réjean soon got the hang of the bumps and stopped fighting the momentum that bounced him out of his seat. He watched the trees as they zipped out of sight, turning to catch them in the rear window as they passed, receding into the distance.
JC took an exit off the main road into a lot where a butter-coloured mobile home sat behind a lit-up sign that spelled WORLD OF CHEESE.
“This guy moves a lot of our stuff,” said JC. “But he’s an idiot and he never shuts up. He’ll do anything he can not to pay, but he’s got the busiest cheese shop in three townships. I always try and make these quick. See if you can look like you mean business. He’s gonna want to talk.”
As they approached the store, the man could be seen through the window gesticulating at a female customer with a wrapped wedge of cheese. JC rolled his eyes.
“Look at him,” he said, stopping and lighting another cigarette. “He stands there all day long, talking. I’ve never seen him not talking.” JC glowered through the window a moment longer and let out a huff. “Idiot,” he muttered.
When they walked in the door, the man fluttered to attention and handed the wedge of cheese to the woman, who grabbed it and fled.
“Mr. JC! What a wonderful surprise! What can I get you? I just baked biscuits this morning with some of your paysan, though I had to bake them at home because I’m still fighting to get a food-prep permit and I can’t even tell you the trouble they’re giving me. I had to cart three dozen biscuits and muffins across town in the Corolla and, well, I don’t know if you’ve seen the trunks in those things. You can see it out there right now. Just right out there. It’s the gold one. Look at that, it’s just a tiny hatchback thing and I have to pile pans of biscuits on top of each other and they get all mashed up, which is not good for presentation. You know, if I could bake on-site, I could use more of your cheese. I mean, if you knew anyone you could talk to on council, anyone at all, I’ll bet they’d listen. With me they’re just like, well, I scare them or something. That’s their problem, you know. They’re afraid of new ideas.”
JC lit a cigarette and threw his match on the floor. The man went on.
“I’m thinking of opening up a patio out front. Have I told you about this? I’m going to hire local jazz musicians and have, like, soirées. Have I mentioned this? So obviously, I’m going to be moving a lot of cheese, but I’m also looking at having the patio licensed, so I could be moving a lot of wine, too, if you know what I mean?” He gave JC a theatrical look. “Only thing is, you know how the town council is with liquor licences. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried getting a licence in this town, but…”
Réjean, initially dumbfounded by the onslaught of chatter, remembered he was supposed to look like he meant business, and took a step forward. The cheese idiot fell silent, moved straight to the till, and started stuffing cash into a yellow envelope.
JC took the paved roads home.
Sitting at his kitchen table, Martin patted his coat pocket. Gun, he thought, and a warm surge of affection swept through him. He was also comforted by the smattering of crumbs stuck to the front of his coat. Certainly, he had eaten a date square before, but these ones were different. They were not only unusually delicious, but had an intangible familiarity to them, and a hint of lemon peel. They felt almost alive in his guts.
Carrés de dattes, he thought. Carrés de dattes.
With his hand on his belly, he repeated the words to himself until a pan of date squares materialized in the air before him. Carrés de dattes. A pair of red oven mitts appeared beneath the pan, carrying it toward him. Slowly and fuzzily at first, then more clearly, two arms appeared from the ends of the oven mitts, leading to a pair of shoulders and a sleeveless pantsuit. Atop the pantsuit was the warm face of a woman with golden hair, tied up in a big braided bun, like a brioche. A woman who loved Réjean Lapointe. A woman who shared his truck and his home and his bed. Though he hadn’t been denying her existence entirely, Martin had been pushing her from his mind more than he was willing to admit. Something itched at him that he couldn’t place. There was plenty itching at him, in fact, but he had lost the presence of mind to sift through it, and sat at the table until dawn, studying the linoleum, hoping for clarity.
When the morning sun shone through the gauzy curtains left by the previous tenant, Martin got an impulse. He stood up from the table and waited for the next one. This was good. This was easy. Impulses would tell him what came next. Impulse moved him to the door and into the Ranger.
His appearance at the dealership cast a confused hush over the sales guys, who watched him from the main building as he parked what was unmistakably a Ford Ranger and emerged from it wearing what was definitely a set of yellow foul-weather gear. It wasn’t raining. They watched in disconcerted silence as he walked straight past the building to his portable, disappeared through the plywood door, and reappeared with his name-tag pinned to his raincoat. His journey to the middle of the car lot looked exploratory.
A woman with three straggling kids approached him and, without seeming to notice his attire, began to tell him what she was looking for. She had just received a big divorce settlement and custody of the kids. She was determined to buy a family sport utility vehicle that day, take the kids up to stay with her parents, and go on a trip by herself. She needed to get away. Martin had these ones down cold. Normally, he started by demonstrating his solemn approval of her situation by showing, with a softening of his face, his appreciation of the weight of her decision. Then he would veer gently away from her anger, without dismissing it, by moving on to the lighter topic of the kids themselves and how much work they must be; he would include an observation along the lines of “Bet they keep you on your toes” or “They sure look like a handful.” It was important to let moms know he understood what a difficult job they had. But today Martin came up with nothing. He couldn’t imagine anything more unnatural than talking to a stranger.
As he waited for his next impulse, he looked down at the older of her boys,
who was playing with two toy soldiers, making pheeoo sounds with his lips. Martin turned all his attention to the child and his soldiers.
“I’m thinking red. What do you have that’s red?” asked the woman.
Martin looked up from the child and said, “I gotta go,” turned sharply, and headed for the Ranger with a quick, rigid gait. He knew he needed to be near Réjean’s wife, but he hadn’t yet retrieved the reason why from the mess inside him. He climbed in and gunned the engine, peeling across the lot as his co-workers at the window gaped. Ferris ran out the door to grab the sale.
He knew where the Lapointe house was from Réjean’s documentation, and had on many occasions driven past the end of the long, wooded driveway, where the number 1739 was burned into a varnished wooden plaque hanging from a post. He parked the Ranger a safe distance away from the foot of the drive, which went up a steep, winding incline, receding into the trees. You couldn’t see the house at all from the road. He raised his elbows as he tiptoed through the leaves, believing it made him lighter. When he reached the bend in the drive and saw the house, he stopped again. She would be inside, in her red oven mitts. The idea of being close to her filled him with a sparkly excitement.
Martin crept along the side of the house until he saw the front door. The lights were on in the kitchen and a round little woman sat at the table in a track suit, smoking. She wore no brioche bun or oven mitts. His eyes locked on her and he could not tear them away. With tiny, invisible steps, he edged toward the wooded back area under the black canopy of pine. From this vantage point through the kitchen window, he could watch her clearly.
I Am a Truck Page 9
