She stood before me in a faded but immaculate gingham dress, the kind of dress a farmer’s wife might have worn thirty years ago, her dark auburn hair caught up in two long thick braids, her brown eyes, open wide like a startled doe poised to escape. Clenched in her hand was a crumpled five dollar bill. In the other, a plastic grocery bag bursting with lettuce and carrots.
“Please come in,” I replied in French, “and we can talk about it.”
She hesitated, her hand halfway to the door handle as if trying to make up her mind whether to enter or flee. Then after a deep intake of breath, she whispered, “Merci, madame,” and stepped silently onto the porch.
I had intended to talk her out of it, convinced I didn’t have sufficient knowledge to teach the constructs of my native tongue. But the sight of her scars changed my mind. Yvette hadn’t meant me to see them, but Sergei’s welcoming snout brushed her full skirt briefly aside. The second I glimpsed the faint purple tracks of old cuts above her knees, I knew I was dealing with a deeply troubled young woman.
I’d seen similar scars once before on a girlhood friend, whose self-esteem had bottomed out to such an extent that she’d taken to slitting herself periodically with a razor. Although I’d never known what was behind this selfmutilation, I’d suspected the source was my friend’s parents, who were more prone to punishment than kindness.
I decided that I could at least offer this young Québécoise the basics of English, and more importantly, perhaps my place could become a refuge from whatever it was she was trying to erase with her pain. As for payment, we agreed that it would be an exchange. She would help me improve my French.
We established that she would come twice a week to Three Deer Point for two hours, an hour and a half of English and a half hour of French. It had taken all my negotiating skills to convince her that this arrangement was a fair exchange. She finally relented when she acknowledged that perhaps my French was a little better than her English, and therefore didn’t need as long a lesson. But the bargaining wasn’t over until I agreed to accept a weekly bag of fresh produce from her father’s market garden. While her English had clearly improved since that time, I was convinced I’d gotten the better end of the bargain. The cornucopia of vegetables she brought each week was far superior to anything I’d buy in the local stores.
I learned little about Yvette Gagnon on her first visit or even on subsequent ones. All I could glean was that she lived with her father on his farm and had for a number of years. She never mentioned her mother or talked of siblings.
As for her father, I quickly learned what he was all about. The first lesson was no sooner finished than a battered Ford pickup with a cracked windshield coughed to a halt by the front stairs. The old man didn’t even bother to leave the truck, just rolled down his window and rasped, “Yvette, viens!” in a tone I wouldn’t use to call my dog. I half expected Yvette to tell her father to get lost, at least that’s what I would’ve done. But she didn’t. Smiling shyly, she thanked me and with a final “Goodbye. I come Wednesday at two hour,” she walked resolutely to the truck.
I fully expected not to see her again, convinced her father would prevent her, but on Wednesday punctually at two o’clock, the old man dropped her off at my door. And in exactly two hours, not a minute earlier nor a minute later, he returned in that beat-up old truck to take her away. And so it continued, every Monday and Wednesday through the summer and on into the fall. She missed only one day, and that was through no fault of her own. Her father had taken a tumble in the barn and was unable to drive. She could’ve walked, she said, like the first time, but he’d wanted her to remain by his side.
Despite my hope that she would eventually unburden whatever troubled her, she hadn’t. She religiously stuck to the lesson, never strayed from the topic. Though, about a month ago, when she’d arrived confused and trembling, instead of a formal lesson, we’d just sat and chatted like two old friends over a cup of tea until she’d calmed down. However, any expectations I’d had about her opening up were not met. By the time her father came to pick her up, she’d shed no light on its cause, other than to say she hadn’t been feeling well. I hadn’t believed her.
* * *
I must have drifted off to sleep, for suddenly I found myself awake and momentarily confused by my location. I shuddered when reality sank in. The faint, even breathing by my side told me Yvette was still alive, but her lack of response to my questioning also told me she’d not yet regained consciousness.
My watch indicated Pierre had gone for help a little over two hours ago. If he was able to find it at the Fishing Camp, I should expect rescue in another hour or so. Otherwise, if people had to come from Migiskan Village, it could be at least two more hours of waiting stranded here alone in the dark with only the regularity of Yvette’s breathing to keep me company.
The night was no blacker than before. In fact, it appeared lighter. The cloud cover had vanished, leaving in its stead a billion stars filtering a breath of light onto our desperate situation. But it was colder, much colder. I rubbed my shivering and aching limbs and checked the thin silvery blanket to make sure it covered Yvette completely.
I strained to hear any alien sound that would tell me help was arriving but heard only my rustling night demons. I clung to Yvette’s inert body for strength. I tried one of the mental games I had invented as a child to keep the boogeyman at bay.
But night’s shifting shadows loomed closer. The rustling advanced. The shuffles approached. A branch snapped behind me. I jerked around. One snapped in front. I jerked back. A shadow plunged from the sky. Something slapped me on the face. I screamed. I flicked the leaf away, annoyed by my growing hysteria. I was losing control, no longer able to distinguish between my demons and the pounding of my heart.
All of a sudden Yvette cried out, “Non!”
I jumped.
She cried out again, “Non! Fais pas. Tu me blesses.”
“Yvette, it’s okay,” I replied in French. “Wake up. It’s Meg. I’m not hurting you. It’s the injuries from your fall.”
Then with her next outburst, I realized she wasn’t accusing me, but someone else of hurting her.
“Fais pas! Papa, j’suis désolée.”
Her father. The most logical cause of her real pain. I held her tightly. “It’s all right. You’re safe.”
Then I heard the sound of all-terrain vehicles, quickly followed by the sweetest sound in the world. “Meg, hold on. We’re almost there.” It was Eric.
four
So what are you going to do about Papa Gagnon?” I cast an exasperated look at Eric, who was supposed to be my friend, my lover. We were sitting in his tiny cluttered office at the Forgotten Bay Hunting and Fishing Camp trying to talk calmly about yesterday’s disaster.
I was dead tired, having just spent the night with Yvette at the hospital in Somerset, the closest town at thirty-five kilometres away. Rather than returning home to get muchneeded sleep, I’d come in search of Eric to sort out the marathon disaster.
“Why, Meg, what’s happened to the weepy damsel in distress who last night couldn’t keep her hands off her knight on his trusty four-wheeled charger?” Two deep dimples erupted on either side of a broad grin.
While his face would never be called handsome, it had a certain ruggedness that
