by centuries of suffering and subservience, leave their dear machete on the bus’s running board with apparent regret before taking their seat.
Cowboy silently handed me his weapon. Grasping it carefully, I performed a few clumsy manoeuvres under his approving gaze. At times, the three Indians traded short sentences, as unintelligible to my ear as the hoarse honking of the geese. We exchanged succinct thoughts, without words, while the generators angry roar highlighted the piercing silence.
Hovering over the platform of this isolated station, like the whisper of an implicit pact between us, was a secret agreement which the machete would’Ve secured. We heard ominous rumbling in the distance, and I shivered as I caressed the machete.
Mr. Administrator was talking. He was talking and stepping on the accelerator, as though his monologue was fuelling the vans engine. The machinery roared along the deserted road, his words trying to fill the desolate silence between us, between the trees and everywhere. The sandy trail was furrowed and potholed, meandering along the boreal forest, tearing through the endless web of black spruce, its lonely stretches clinging to the lakeheads, spiralling down into valleys, infinitely disappearing into the back country, while an inert storm closed in around us. At times, a dusty flag alerted the driver to a deep crevice in the middle of the road.
“To make a long story short....”
Lakes paraded by, lapping the roadside like frozen gems set in the peat, while the approaching twilight brushed them with amethyst. The forest was a lacy bower all round, its profile growing more pronounced. My new boss chattered away, spraying saliva on the windshield smeared with insects. He went on endlessly, in a high-pitched voice, eyes wavering between me and the road, readjusting the vehicles course before looking at me again, forever concerned about my receptiveness, his head oscillating like a metronome lingering between indefinite collimations. He’d sometimes look for a word, sifting through his brain, poring over his paradigms; he’d catch his breath somewhat, getting lost in a contemplation of the unevenly gravelled network of ruts, then finally collar it, brandishing it triumphantly on the tip of his tongue, ready to spew it. The gleaming four-by-four, poised on its heavy-duty shocks, seemed to glide over this pathetic patchwork of potholes.
“To cut a long story short....”
Side roads ploughed through the dense foliage bordering the main highway. More often than not, the exposed forest appeared as a drapery hung in trompe-l’oeil, a double hedge denying travellers an infinite view of the territory. A few rows of spruce, carefully spared by loggers, camouflaged a huge wasteland of clear-cuts. Fierce winds would soon break the remaining trees like toothpicks. The endless row of conifers undulated like dark lace against the reddening sky. Might as well, I mused, comfort the tourist in his favourable impression of wilderness.
“In short..,.”
The Company had cut as much as it could, then cleared out. It had moved farther west, since operating out of Grande-Ourse was no longer profitable. Boy, had it felled and cut trees and columns of wood fibre, pulverizing countless tons of ligneous material; they laid out a main road, then secondary ones perpendicular to it and, finally, tertiary roads perpendicular to the secondary ones. Then they cut and mowed everything down far and wide. Clearing all this, ladies and gentlemen, is their business.
“Anyhow....”
Mr. Administrator’s words faded into the engines continual rumble and the air whistling against the windshield. Occasionally, between bumps, I’d respond with a vague gesture, eyes lowered on the boastful leaflet I tried to wedge between my rattling knees.
GRANDE-OURSE OUTFITTERS
A HUNTING AND FISHING PARADISE
CITY COMFORT IN THE MIDDLE OF NATURE
Pleasantly impressed by my knowledge of hunting and fishing, which I’d avoided saying was mostly theoretical, Mr. Administrator had hired me following a conversation at Place Bonavcnture, during the Camping, Hunting, and Fishing Trade Show, where the preseason bustle had required his promotional zeal. He belonged to a group of businessmen who’d purchased over half the village of Grande-Ourse when the Company had pulled out a few years earlier, expecting to convert the private town into a tourist facility.
“In any event.... To make a long story short...”
Id once heard about this village, which was unique in Quebec, as it was created by the industry exclusively to house forestry workers. Grande-Ourses economy had peaked in the seventies when high-voltage lines had been run through the region, linking James Bay to the south of the province. Line builders had worked like bees to erect the imposing pylons, which had become an integral part of northern lore.
At night, in accordance with natural laws, something else erected in their pants. The Grande-Ourse Hotel was always full; dancing girls from Mont-Laurier and elsewhere willingly providing additional services. At first, the dancing girls were driven away by protests from the local worthies, though they were a small minority. Then prosperity itself vanished, the blow being given by the holy Company’s departure. Grande-Ourse residents, however, had kept the habit of drinking, eating, screwing, doing their laundry, and living way beyond their means.
A fierce wind tore the brochure from my hands, and Mr. Administrator hawkishly watched the document fly away. He parked his car on the edge of the road and excused himself. He had to check a welding joint on the trailer that, so far, had followed us obediently. The road didn’t like motor vehicles, shaking them like a bronco trying to throw his rider into the landscape.
Our sudden immobility wrapped us in the norths palpable silence. We heard faint bird songs, including the evening note of the white-throated sparrow and other muffled and scattered strains. Spring still had to dig in and invent itself. We were right at the interval, at the vulnerable point of any awakening.
My driver, looking appropriately fastidious, leaned his white head under the trailer, while I began looking around, crunching the gravel with my clodhoppers. I spotted an idle grass snake on the roadside, desperately trying to draw a little heat from the last rays of the setting sun. It let me pick it up without resisting.
With childish delight, I showed my catch to the man, whose immaculate hair was now smeared with grease. I waved the creature under his nose, as he lifted his head, frowned, and affected an expression that was disdainful, suspicious, and slightly disgusted, “Alive?”
I nodded. “Only a little numb.... They crawl onto the road to get some sun this time of year. They’re cold blooded, you see...”
As though to punctuate that brief account, the reptile compressed a gland near its tail and squirted my wrist with foul-smelling musk. Mr. Administrator grimaced and turned away. Standing up unsteadily, he shook himself. “Chuck that thing! It reeks like hell!... I checked everything out, we can move on....”
He turned his back to me as I slowly walked away from the road, moving my lips like a praying ophite, handling the snake as it tried to twist around my forearm.
They seem to fear silence, fear that words will lodge like fish bones in their throats. Turning to others with all their energy, their words are entirely centrifugal, their conversation a feat of strength, a high-wire act. Sometimes it begins to waver at the edge of their internal abyss, so they look around for a pole, precariously clinging to hollow-sounding words; it always starts up again, hangs together as best it can, moves on, resonates in a vacuum, and so they invent their little web of fine-sounding
