Читать книгу Cowboy - Louis Hamelin - Страница 6

GILLES IS ON DUTY THAT NIGHT. Hanging glasses upside-down above his head. Sometimes, a drop falls on his forehead, with an impact of lead. He fills other glasses. Full glass, empty glass. Full glass. The men are thirsty. Full glass, empty glass. Rinsed and suspended to that large light above his head. Another drop hits his forehead. An already high forehead, which he wipes. It’s hot. To make yourself invisible. A glass barman.

His mother has gone to his sister’s in Montreal Squabbling’s in the air. She usually takes care of the hotel The Americans are shooting pool at the back of the hall. Drinking since late afternoon and blind drunk. At the other end of the room, Romeo Flamand and his girlfriend quietly sip drinks. Flamand, his girlfriend. Flamand deflowered Giséle when she was sixteen; she’s already near the peak of her charms. Gilles looks at her and sponges his forehead. Flamand orders two more beers. His long hair is very dark and shiny, tied back in a pony tail He breathes like the bellows of a forge. His chest seems made of copper. Gilles keeps a low profile, is flattened and transparent. A glass barman. He looks ahead. Raoul Legris, hairy and evil-eyed, is leaning on the bar Straddling a stool, he crackles banknotes on the bar. American money. He pivots, turns towards Flamand and Giséle, over there.

Another drop hits Gilles, sliding along the arch of his eyebrow, plunging over his orbit, going around a nostril, then following the curve of a dimple, softly moistening the corner of his closed lips. The men are drinking at the back of the hall. Full glass, empty glass. Full glass. Americans playing American billiards. Gilles is in charge of everything. His father, as well, went fishing this morning with a trollop from Montreal who has lots of money and an impotent husband. An old couple that’s loaded. He’s stingy and wasted; she’s decent and generous. She’s overflowing. Full glass, empty glass. A full stomach. Boisvert promised to return by nightfall Gossips say that when he guides up there, it’s because the woman has the requisite charms. It’s July and Gilles is hot. These walls and that half-open door. Balls collide on the pool table, and the barman sponges his forehead.

With Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day drawing near, the Old Man said he had to make a trip for supplies. He actually intended to get a decent load of beer. Rail transportation was too expensive for such imposing consignments. The Old Man would head to town and rent a truck, loading it with enough beer to set a Guinness record. He’d been talking about the deed for a good fortnight when, sometime in mid-June, he decided to go into action.

That morning, at the front of the store, we were a small and sleepy group. Benoît looked at us tirelessly with glazed eyes. The Muppet emerged by intervals from another station in the cold room. Big Ben was trying to hitch his perfect rotundity to some sufficiently solid support, repeating to whoever would listen, “Oh, the sun, the beautiful sun, Ooh.”

Near the entrance, Legris showed off by fingering the perimeter of his most recent wound, sniggering up his sleeve. He wanted to tell everyone that, although he was as gregarious as the others down deep, also needing to hear a human voice in the morning, he’d never be fooled by the old swine’s play-acting. The latter, at that very moment, was exerting himself among them, rebuking Legris, “You were seen hanging around Crazy Sam’s trailer, you devil!”

Legris expectorated a gob of undefinable hue. The Old Man was walking towards him, hand raised, but the swipe got lost in swirls of luminescent particles created by the rising sun through the window pane. Legris didn’t even bother protecting himself.

“Crazy Sam promised he’d hire me as a guide this year, ves sir!’

The Old Man sighed. Oh, he personally knew the solution to all their problems! Only thing needed was for his advice to be taken. Before these few captive souls in the grips of boredom, his words defied destiny, addressing Grande-Ourse’s shaky posterity above all their heads. He was on the verge of dizziness as he spoke, like someone walking at the edge of a cliff. He spoke ceaselessly. Everyone knew he’d disappear like the simple iridescence on water drops at the first stop. He’d sometimes leave a phrase dangling almost as he’d started it, picking it up again, seeking what followed, soon looking for what he ought to have sought first, looking for himself all the while in the gaping void that swallows bankrupt memories. His entire world suddenly sank into a swirl of silence. He was already dying a little between his words.

The Muppet emerged from the cold, room, shaking a head that could barely be distinguished from a neck as wrinkled as an old shoe. He said to the Old Man that he ought to hurry and bring his truck back, since the beavers were really busy around the small bridge at the Seven Mile Point, threatening to flood the road at any moment. The Muppet hadn’t failed to notice changes in the water level, nor the distressingly low quantity of our beer supplies.

The Old Man gave neither a positive nor a negative reply. The only beaver he cared about was the one stamped on the nickels he could pocket. He disappeared and immediately returned, holding a 30-30, ashen-faced with rage, cursing the great boss of the confederal bestiary, that damned emblem of Canada, I won’t stand for it, and that, henceforth, this meant war! He commandingly placed the weapon in my hands, pushed a khaki cap down over my eyes, and ordered me to follow him.

Legris sniggered and Big Ben said: “Oh, Oh,” and an accordion’s squeal could be heard coming from Mr. Muppet’s neck.

The Old Man insisted on driving a precious-looking vehicle along these totally broken-down roads. A Dacia, made in Romania no doubt to travel over peaceful and rustic landscapes. It hadn’t cost much, but its eccentric shape clashed with this hostile territory and its occupant was the laughing stock of the village.

I climbed aboard and, laboriously clutching in, the Old Man got us under way. A favourable incline immediately helped the departure’s success and the movement that followed. My driver missed a shift on the large hill, the engine stalled and the vehicle began to back up while the Old Man looked for the brakes. Bystanders were slapping their thighs in front of the store.

“Damned beavers!” the Old Man grumbled.

After wrestling with the stick shift, he finally managed to get us back on track, and we reached the scene of the showdown at a snails pace. The road narrowed abruptly there; two dull-surfaced lakes swelled on either side, as though anxious to meet, their waters marbled with foam. A brook, hidden by the small bridge, joined them. The structure dated from the days of the Company, and foresters were in theory responsible for its maintenance. It was now on the road to decrepitude and wavelets had already started lapping the narrow decks belly. Looking worried, the Old Man leaned on a pillar where crude notches registered changes in the water level. He immediately concluded that the suspects were extremely active and I awaited the launch of a visibly imminent punitive action, weapon against my shoulder. For the moment, we settled on pacing up and down the bridge’s surroundings.

“Maybe we should look for their lodge,” I suggested in a low voice.

“Hmmmm....”

“We’d have to come back and lie in wait at night, at dusk...”

“Hmmm....”

The Old Man seemed reluctant to leave the road. He shrugged, pretending to believe that our mere armed presence, at the edge of their domain, would give the highway sappers a beneficial fright. I was going to venture another tactical consideration, but the Old Man stopped me with a gesture. He’d spotted a can of Budweiser at the edge of the road, grabbed it, and placed it at some distance in front of a sand knoll.

I was holding an electrifying object, a genuine legend of the North-American arsenal: a 30-30 Winchester, the ancient rifle of cowboys. Trying to control my breathing, I raised the weapon, a gesture seemingly conscious and mechanical, as though controlled from far away. Put one knee to the ground and the heavy killing device seemed made of silence in my arms. I pulled the trigger and the projectile raised a small plume of dust a good metre from the can, which rapidly dissipated, while a frightful tearing froze the forest. On my second try, the bullet pierced the sand one inch below the target which went flying vertically through the air, intact. It was already an improvement. I could see the gash on the side of the dune. But the Old Man prodded me to be off. The peal of the discharge had been enough for him and he seemed to think it would be enough for the beavers as well. The small family must’ve been mocking us under its roof of branches, in the musty shadows filled with the flash of yellow incisors. With the rifle on my knees, I was pensive and vaguely dissatisfied, filled with a strange fascination for what had just happened, as though Id stepped onto the threshold of an ancient and important discovery.

Grande-Ourse lived under the sign of hope. The whole town played the lottery. These people, so quick to disagree about all possible subjects, would mysteriously stick together when the Old Man, an unparalleled leader wherever money was concerned, organized a collective participation in the 6/49 lottery. Everyone hurried to give him their contribution. Most, however, quickly learned to have their arms twisted. When time came to collect dues, Legris and Moreau invariably had gone fishing, the Old Man having just missed them. He railed against these evasions whose perpetrators, he claimed, didn’t hesitate to sacrifice the common good to their immediate interest. He’d become the accredited publicist of fortune. It was a marvel to see him going through his newspaper to find the section with the winning numbers, clipping it feverishly, pinning it to the stores bulletin board. He’d spend long moments contemplating those naked numbers, musing about their power to create dreams. A simple and secret process, like setting a trap: people placed their future in the hands of a half-dozen sure numbers hurled through the emptiness of uncertain immensity, knocking wood while they awaited. It seemed that the 6/49 was the only thing that could still save the village.

Benoît had another image of the jackpot. A spirited and energetic woman would step off the train one day, and fall in love with him as she entered the store. She’d never leave Grande-Ourse. And he’d rebuild the crummy village with his bare hands, realizing an economic miracle for which he’d be acclaimed as a genuine hero. For Big Ben, the jackpot was the huge black bear he’d been doggedly tracking for over a week; listening to him, it must’ve been the Sasquatch’s brother at the very least. He’d devote a good half of his days to him, borrowing the Outfitters’ truck for the mission, driving off at the majestic speed of a knight straddling his mount. Benoît would protest, “He’s going to hide in the woods, so he can twiddle his thumbs!”

But the Old Man emphasized the anticipated profits this amazing hide would represent when shown to the Americans on their arrival, with the innocent remark befitting the circumstances, “One of the smallest bagged this year, isn’t that right Big Ben, pal?”

“Ooh Oh Oh Oh yes Oh Oh yes.”

Every night, Big Ben returned empty-handed, flopping down in front of the store, oblivious to the swarms of blackflies bumping into the thickness of his fat hide. He sighed powerfully, looking for a comfortable position on the cement stairs. His exhaustion was supposed to convince us the chase was no picnic.

“So, Big Ben, pal? How’d the bear hunting go?”

The Old Man’s attitude showed he was ready to believe any seamless yarn.

“Oh Oh the big Bear! Oh! Ooh! Followed the tracks! Oh the damned big Bear! Oh not far! Tomorrow! Oh tomorrow the damned big Bear!”

It was always impossible to learn more about the roving bedside rug. The beast existed where it had to, sheltered from imaginations. Everyone here had a plan, a fantasy, a mental edifice more or less in the process of collapsing.

Jacques Boisvert hovered above the fray. His wonderful arrogance made him elusive and he was unlike most of his peers. Their solid parochialism invariably brought them back, after a few wrong-way turns down one-ways, from the big-city streets to their tiny point of origin on the map, while Boisvert allowed himself outings into society. His Beaver gave him a perspective that necessarily relativized Grande-Ourse in his mind. Based on Lac Légaré with his hydroplanes, he’d take nature-sampling enthusiasts farther north than any of his immediate competitors. Boisvert spent winters down south, living the high life, chasing women and drumming up future customers among the powdered noses in Miami. High society is where he’d set his winter trap line. Since his wife’s death, he’d brought more than one poor little thing back to Grande-Ourse who, quickly disillusioned, set sail after a few months.

The last one to date, his official chick, as the Old Man would’ve said, was Brigitte. He’d harpooned her one night when he’d gone on an epic drunk in a St. Denis Street bar, where his transient loathing of celibacy had taken him. Jacques Boisvert could look quite the gentleman when he wanted. Although well into his fifties, he looked dapper, and thought highly of himself. And he needed a woman to run the hotel, since he never set foot there. Haunted by bad memories, he preferred to concentrate on his sky. With shrewd brevity, he’d told the lady about his intense and untamed life over in his fiefdom, nestled amid pines, firs and spruces sprinkled with incidental fetuses of humanity.

Brigitte was thirty years old, had an iron grip, and a heart-shaped face. Even Moreau, it was said, behaved in front of her. Boisvert was still peerless in his ability to choose a woman. And, moreover, able to fly after drinking twenty-six ounces of scotch. No one had ever seen him drunk. It must be said that, up there, space for zigzagging was plentiful.,.. He always landed his Beaver like a water lily. He crashed only once (which explained the shell I’d seen in the scrap yard), getting out without a scratch, of course.

Every time the character’s name was brought up, the Old Man had trouble containing himself. An old, carefully maintained rivalry existed between them, fuelled by the pranks of the one, and the swaggering of the other. It was a battle to the finish between the perennial braggart and the man of action, the big talker and the terrible doer.

That day, amid feverish preparations for leaving, Boisvert burst into the store. I was posted behind the counter and, with his dark stare lingering on me as though neglectfully, I thanked fate for placing me out of his way. Hérode narrowly escaped the pounding of the large work boots, taking refuge in the arms of Admiral Nelson who stood at attention nearby. Boisvert, supple and straight, headed for the Old Man, rolling his knotty shoulders. He stood in front of the grandfather, fists on his hips, and summed up what he really thought. “You cant cross the Seven Mile Bridge with a heavy truck...”

The tone was scathing and irrefutable. He’d already turned around and was heading away. The Old Mans reply caught up to him at the doorstep. “I know that road like the back of my hand!”

Boisvert turned around theatrically, and said jeeringly, “You probably do know the back of your hand well... But were talking about beavers here, not rats!”

He gave free rein to his mirth. The Old Man, who’d paled, pointed a spirited digit at him, “I know that road inside out. And I know what I’m talking about!”