snowshoes were gone from the barn, leaving only the ancient bear-paws, Jacques had blamed his grandfather for taking them. Now he figured it was really his uncle’s fault. Hippolyte had put Pépère up to it, which wasn’t surprising. Ever since his younger brother had arrived, Pépère was doing things he’d never dare do before.
Like today. It was only because of Hippolyte’s goading that Pépère had risked ice fishing in such weather. After eighty years, his grandfather knew better than to go out on the snow covered lake in a blizzard, when you couldn’t tell sky from ground. Sure, it wasn’t snowing when the two of them had set out this morning, but Pépère knew those clouds on the other side of the lake meant it would be snowing like stink by midday, that’s for sure. He’d even said as much, but Hippolyte wasn’t having any of it.
“Eh ben! You gone soft behind the ears, old one?” Hippolyte challenged in his hoarse smoker’s voice. “Afraid of a little snow? Maudit crisse, you are truly an old man.” His grandfather didn’t even bother to reply, just stomped out of the room.
Next thing Jacques knew, the two burly shapes, loaded down with tip-ups, buckets and other ice fishing equipment, were lumbering down the hill to the flat plain of the lake. Each was the bookend to the other. Although there were ten years separating the two brothers, the passage of time had made them twins, short and stocky with thick spare tires around their middle, that even heavy duffel coats couldn’t hide.
And of course they both had the nose, the Tremblay nose that Jacques too had inherited. No one could miss it for the amount of space it occupied on the high cheek-boned Tremblay face. And from the side profile it jutted straight out with a sharp downward turn like the beak of some giant bird, which was why people around here called the Tremblays the Crow’s Beaks.
Unfortunately, a nose of this size had one distinct disadvantage in this weather. It froze. Jacques rubbed the numb tip with his icy mitt. He tried to see if there was any sign yet of the two fishermen and was blasted once again by the wall of blinding snow.
“Pépère, you there?” he shouted, praying they’d had the sense to fish in this part of the lake and not where they usually went. But the only response was the muffled rasping of the snow against his hood.
A quick backward glance brought on a faint lick of fear. The shoreline had vanished. He was cut off. And his track, the last reference to home, was fast disappearing.
He thought of the advice his grandfather had pounded into him since he was a child. “In a whiteout, stay put, mon p’tit. Don’t move, you’ll get lost, maybe even fall into a hole in the ice.”
Yeah, well, a fat lot of good that advice would do him now. He might as well fall into a hole rather than return home without his grandfather.
“I don’t trust that God-cursed Hippolyte,” Maman had shouted from the kitchen. “No saying what he’ll get up to in this tempest. Turn that TV off now and go find your Pépère.”
And when Jacques hesitated, she shouted “And if something happens to him, you’ll answer to God.”
So what choice did he have? Besides, he knew she was right; he didn’t trust Hippolyte either. With a last drag on his cigarette, Jacques turned back into the driving snow.
For sure, his grandfather and uncle were fishing in the bay at the other end of the lake, next to English Bait Point. Since the big storms always blew from that shore, he figured if he walked straight into the wind he’d eventually stumble into them.
There was a curious thing about this particular fishing spot. Before his uncle came to live with them, the old man had avoided it like it was the devil’s curse. Instead, his grandfather fished winter and summer near Indian Rock, convinced the biggest walleye hung out in the surrounding deep water. In fact, he fished there so often people had renamed the giant slab of granite “Crow’s Beak Rock”.
It had taken some convincing by Hippolyte to get his brother to go against habit and of course his fears: Pépère clung to the belief that even one step on the neighbouring water was a step towards death. Hippolyte had argued hotly and loudly that his brother was a silly old fool to believe in such superstitious nonsense. It had happened so long ago that it was only crazy old men like his brother who still believed that death would come to those who walked over the dead man’s bones. Besides, everyone knew that the bones had long since been reburied in the Protestant cemetery at Mont Georges.
At first, Pépère wouldn’t budge. As far as he was concerned, Indian Rock had been good to him. Indian Rock was where he was going to fish come hell or high water. Hippolyte could go fishing where he damn well pleased, but he’d go alone. Atleast that was what his grandfather had said, until his uncle came home with the biggest, meanest looking walleye Jacques had ever seen. Next time Hippolyte went ice fishing, he didn’t go alone.
“Tabarnac!” yelled Jacques, as his boot slipped out of the ancient bindings again. He struggled to retrieve the snowshoe and promptly lost his balance, landing nose first in the snow. Sputtering in frustration, he fought with the icy powder until he gained enough purchase to push himself onto his feet.
They deserve to freeze to death, he thought as he kicked his boot back into the binding. He jerked the strap tight. It broke. He tied the broken end of the strap to the webbing. It broke again. In a fit of anger he flung the snowshoes away.
Sacrifice! He was screwed. But he couldn’t turn back.
He lit up another cigarette and struggled through the deep snow. It felt like he was moving a ton of bricks with each forward step. Tabarnac! He’d never reach his grandfather in time. A sudden squall sent him reeling backwards. But he braced himself, and, bending into the wind, ploughed onward.
It was curious how Hippolyte had just turned up out of the forest one hot day last summer. Why, Jacques didn’t even know he had a great-uncle by the name of Hippolyte until the gnarled old man was standing in the doorway, swatting black flies and demanding to see his brother. Even his grandfather seemed a bit puzzled by the stranger in the crumpled suit, clutching the tattered suitcase. But as recognition dawned—for you couldn’t mistake the Crow’s Beak nose—Pépère’s face cracked first into a suspicious scowl then into a weak welcoming smile. “Hippolyte? C’est vrai? It is really you? Unbelievable. We thought you were dead, that’s for sure.”
And so Hippolyte came to live with them, but not without considerable opposition from Jacques’ mother. As far as she was concerned, looking after one old man was enough; two would make it impossible, particularly since the newest arrival probably hadn’t lifted a finger to do any work in his entire life. She searched through the family for another home for Hippolyte.
Of his eleven brothers and sisters, only three had the courtesy to reply. Sister Claudette, the youngest, pleaded that a convent was no suitable place for an old man. Father Jean-Paul, the second eldest, said he had no room in the presbytery. And Madeline, the bluntest of all, said that not even for an audience with the Pope himself was she having a crazy live with her.
For that, as it turned out, was the problem with Mononcle Hippolyte. It was also why Jacques and his mother didn’t know about this youngest boy of the Crow’s Beaks, the one the family had hoped and prayed was long since dead.
Fifty years ago, Hippolyte had been locked away in an asylum for something so dreadful that the family had given part of their land to the church to atone for his sin. They were so ashamed, they’d even asked the priest to excommunicate their son and erase his name from the parish records.
It had taken much pestering by Jacques to discover what Hippolyte
