he negotiated a credit margin with his fists. Besides, everyone knew where his money had gone. At the high point of the economic boom, when his restaurant’s grills were red hot from dawn to dusk, he’d set out to give spatial dimension to his success. After jumbling the main lines of a plan on paper, he’d thrown himself into a housing adventure on his own. Everyone quickly agreed that it was immoderate. A hybrid construction, more Spanish castle than bungalow, was born on a neighbouring hill, as though to spurn the village. Moreau thought he was a handyman, working with the obtuse fervour and simplistic technique of a lumberjack building a log cabin. He’d chosen the only property available in the area, a lot in theory belonging to the British Crown, and counted on that conceited building to finally be able to scoff Grande-Ourse’s new owners at leisure. Suddenly thinking he was a millionaire, he sank all his money into the project.
At first, the house had swelled up like a ball on the granite knoll, getting farther and farther from any reasonable proportion or notion of harmony. Meanwhile, he had to settle for a miserable hovel squeezed into a corner of the restaurant, surrounded by the smell of rank oil, arguing with his wife when returning from daily sessions at the hotel. His wife suffered from ringworm, and was as skinny and ugly as he was sturdy. She thought she was prodding her big bear’s creative inclinations as best she could with her ceaseless recriminations, but the effort had hung fire. The sudden blossoming of materials, beams and boards, joists and slats, mouldings and piers, had languished. The residence really did dominate the village, but still had no glass in its windows, handrails on its stairs, doors on its hinges, shingles on its roof. Only bare wood, black paper, cement blocks, and plastic house wrap, while the project manager was immersed in prolonged contemplations, nose in his glass a little lower down the slope. Moreau and his wife continued to live in an atmosphere of cooled grease, sleeping and tearing each other to shreds, the image of a dream delivered prematurely between them.
“It’s ridiculous,” whined the Old Man, contemplating the mess. “Try to imagine what the Americans will think when they see that! After all, they know a thing or two about nice properties!”
He’d paced back and forth all night, scratching himself everywhere, very carefully turning away from the shower room each time he passed it in the hall.
“This is the big weekend, boys!” he constantly barked out. “The Big Weekend! You’ll see, they’re real gentlemen, mark my word! Real gentlemen! All the credit cards; you name it, they’ve got it!”
He was choking with anticipation, stroking his money purse, arching his back like a turkey, still chuckling, “The Big Weekend, boys! Victoria Day! Time for us to make a little profit, friends!”
And, indeed, came the morning of the opening. The Americans were there.
They’d arrived in the night, after going through the road decline inherent to such an expedition: luxuriously paved and panoramic freeways in the land of Uncle Sam; Ontario motorways that were still pleasant to drive on; flat and linear Quebec highways still very suited to vehicles; provincial roads that narrowed increasingly, broken up and worn down by pulpwood trucks in the upper stretches of the network; finally, the last leg, icing on the cake, the Grande-Ourse road: dust, bumps, stones, craters, potholes, and washboards. The Americans parked on the slightly angled ground, checked to see if they were still in one piece, then awaited day break. As the Old Man said so well, “Americans respect the sleep of others! A chap from Pennsylvania is allowed to shoot when someone bothers him at night!”
We found the Americans in our yard, early in the morning: three or four off-road vehicles, loaded like mules. The clock showed 5:00 a.m. The Old Man rushed to the door with Benoît on his heels. They hadn’t been able to keep still since the previous day.
Still half asleep, the Yankees dragged themselves inside, putting their bones back into place. Those being initiated stared wide-eyed, asking all around, with timid smiles, “Are you open? Where are we now? Is this place open?”
Having driven through a steady procession of dark trees, they still didn’t completely believe in the magic of this store surging out of the forest late at night. For a few hours, their civilized confidence had ebbed in the obscurity of the woods. Opening his arms wide, the Old Man thundered, “For you, pals, we’re always open. Come in! Come in!”
They were marked by a slight stiffness, a subtle wariness of the gait. They walked as though in a conquered country, in enemy territory, guarding their rear, wearing wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses, chewing fine cigars and shivering in the morning; they were American. The Old Man offered rounds of fresh strong coffee, in real cups if you please, no styrofoam between us. Many knew him well and hailed him happily, comforted by this initial contact. Regulars who came up once or twice a season, saving all year to treat themselves to this trip in fish country. They weren’t millionaires, but small investors who’d started with nothing, having grown relatively prosperous through hard work, and remaining sufficiently familiar with being hard up to not disown their origins. They shook the Old Man’s hand, greeting him with heartfelt “How’ve you been, old sucker?” And he, the familiar face in this unknown territory, puffed out his chest, finally turning his back on this miserable village barely floating above the mud of its rancour.
As far as business was concerned, however, it was a completely different story. When these guys headed to the woods, they outfitted themselves as though the next war had been scheduled for their holidays. The previous day, the Old Man had made me fill a plexiglass window with an entire assortment of colourful baubles bristling with fish-hooks. Expensive for the most part, they rattled entrancmgly when shaken. The Americans converged on the display, handling a few baubles, tossing a few of the most promising lures onto the counter to complement their tackle. But sales remained well below forecasts. They already had all the trinkets needed to confront the unfathomable.
America’s large fortunes, the Old Man liked to repeat, were built on gasoline and the consumption deriving from it. The previous day, the Surgaz company’s tank truck had generously irrigated the subsoil around the store, and the fuel pumps stood in the light like stelae ready to spit out smoke and gas. Benoît was the head pump attendant. While the Old Man made the Southerner’s drool with stories of local abundance (shoals of walleye piled so high they came out of the water, hefty pike whose eyes you might poke out just by dipping the propeller, a huge bear who’d sharpened his claws on every healthy tree in the region), Benoît was on duty by the window. His protruding eyes suddenly widened. I edged up near him to peak over his shoulder.
A vehicle with Pennsylvania plates had pulled up in front of the lead-free gas pump. A chap wearing a long sportsmans cap emerged, and stood facing the pumps, a little stooped, holding a camera. He vaguely resembled a pilgrim praying before a row of menhirs. It was a while before I understood that the fellow was immortalizing with film the numbers on the pump’s gauge. Of course, Grande-Ourse gas prices were astronomical because of the distance. But Benoît marked the occasion. He valued all of this a great deal.
“He’ll at least have that to show his friends....” I said to console him.
The way he agreed told me this would be another long day for him.
“They even bring their own gas!”
The Old Man groaned, incredulous, gently knocking his head against the walls.
“How can an honest businessman make any profit? They even carry their own gas!”
The general tendency was for them to take precautions against the hazards of the local economy. The Americans let their host country take care of the wildlife, but preferred making provisions
