The sky cleared in the afternoon, and a pale sun broke through thick layers of grey. That’s when I saw Cowboy and Karate Kid, the latter still wearing a kimono, apparently oblivious to bad weather. Cowboy was draped in a long maroon coat resembling a pea jacket as much as a bounty hunters greatcoat, and wore a wide-brimmed hat. The two Indians were near the storefront, leaning over a plastic container. Armed with matches and twigs, they were tormenting an unfortunate grass snake imprisoned in a jar. The small reptile was now only a confused knot stirred by limp contortions. Mr. Administrator, standing on the doorstep, hands on his hips, looked down on them with full disapproval. Turning to me, he cleared his voice before hurling out, “Look at them! They seem to think it’s funny!... They treated missionaries basically the same way....”
“With the weather we’re having, it must be completely numbed,” I replied, shrugging. “They re cold-blooded, remember...?”
He looked at me severely, prompting me to add, “Just like fish: I read somewhere they suffer very little when hooked in the mouth. They have a rather primitive nervous system...”
“Primitive...” repeated Mr. Administrator, dreamily.
He stared coldly at the two characters. Shivering, he finally went back in, where Benoît and the Old Man were going around in circles. “Any problems with the Indians lately?” the boss inquired.
Benoît momentarily dropped the pout that made him look like he was chewing his lips and mumbled, shaking his head, “It’s been calm...”
“Calm,” he repeated.
The boy, whose face appeared set with trepidation, also displayed a spectacular tranquillity. As though ashamed of debasing any words, Benoît felt the need to bury each phrase into his downy mustache. He ruminated a few seconds, then added, “Last week, for example, things got a little stirred up...”
That’s all the Old Man needed to wade in with both feet. The brave fellow would gloat at the thought; he liked nothing better than griping about Aboriginals, Siwashes, and their depredations! He ambled towards us, choking and shuddering, eager to regurgitate the bitter fruit of his ruminations, and reiterate his petty apology about the legitimate use of force! He raised his arms, knowing his pantomime by heart.
“We’re all snivellers, god dammit! That’s the truth! We let them push us around like kids!”
The week preceding my arrival, Big Alexandre and his small gang of hoodlums and troublemakers, notorious in the regions reformatories, had turned Grande-Ourse into a wild-west town. The police finally sent a helicopter to clean up the place. Flying over Lac Legaré, which adjoins the village, the aircraft had managed to tip the canoe carrying Big Alexandre and his two cronies. As soon as they’d been fished out, the troublemakers were sent back to the porous halfway house, which had been like a second home during their adolescence. But tempers in Grande-Ourse remained a little overheated.
“You’ll see next time! The police chief himself gave me free hand on the phone! They’re fed up with being bothered by a handful of people who aren’t even able to settle their own problems! You think they’ll send a squad at taxpayer expense each time? For two or three savages who can’t even stand up most of the time they’re so drunk? Let them in, and shoot! Well come in and pick up the pieces. The district police chief said so: BANG!”
He was cradling an imaginary rifle, shooting at everything in sight, no longer holding back.
“Take a guy in Pennsylvania who shoots at a robber, eh? Well, he doesn’t get into any trouble! He’s asked to fill out a form or two, then goes back to his living room! That’s how Americans do things, in Pennsylvania, yes sir!”
He was hopping like a boxer when the bell rings.
“Bang!” he again rumbled. “That’s how they do things over there.... Real gentlemen...
He calmed down somewhat, imploring with every sinew a mad scramble for walleye, bears, and moose: all that Klondike of animal flesh which hailed passing seasons with sacred regularity.
The road map didn’t tell the whole story. Here, the Outfitters and its general store built by the old Company; farther on, the small uniform houses of its employees. Over there, the people, those who’d sponged off the large paper mill and ended up having to be drip-fed by the state after the milch cow had gone. Most now rented from the Outfitters, while others owned land at the edge of the woods. Some squatted discreetly on Crown land, on the fringes of the zone controlled by the new owners. At one time pampered by the Company (which, the Old Man had told me, even mowed the grass of employees, and picked up their garbage), the great majority had taken the change of regime very poorly. The railroad was a genuine boundary.
To the north: the hotel, owned by a certain Jacques Boisvert, and Lac Légaré where the same Boisvert moored his flotilla of hydroplanes, consisting of two Beavers and one Twin Otter. A practical detail: the dispensary stood near the hotel, but the nurse had to cover a large territory and rarely came around.
North of the rails, as well, lived the Indians.
To the south: the restaurant managed by a certain Moreau; the Grande-Ourse train station; and the tiny agglutination that orbited the Outfitters, facing the expanse.
Three times a week, at daybreak, the train smokily plunged into the areas apparent tranquillity, like a whistling blade cutting through a lump of butter. I’d then be awakened with little respect and a jolt. No sooner was I thrust into the bracing air, when we were already parking the pickup on the stations platform. Most of the perishable foods were shipped to Grande-Ourse by rail. Only blueberries grew amid the sand heaps and layers of peat. There was a day for fruits and vegetables, another for meat, milk, etc The train would grind to a stop and we’d transfer merchandise with a semblance of enthusiasm: flaccid, dirt-covered potatoes, onions with shaggy tufts, wilted vegetables and bruised fruit destined to rot, poured into the back of the truck. Northern inhabitants are proud carnivores who harbour a secular suspicion of any vegetation. The more omnivorous ones had been prescient and had already reserved their ration of this weekly heap of pulp, fibre, and scraps, with the assurance of securing the best pieces. The remainder would moulder on shelves, giving off the usual smells.
A little farther on, boastful and cynical Grande-Ourse residents secretly slipped their grocery lists to some shifty attendant. The trains staff, however, were concerned about relations with local authorities. An employee always managed to toss us an issue of the Journal de Montré al, tightly wrapped around a high content: of shock value and sleaze, and no fresher than the alleged scoops it had travelled with. It would lie imposingly on the table several days, before collecting potato peels or shrouding a fish.
The Indians used the train as much as they could to get around, since their socio-political status provided them economical access to it. They’d often be seen looking for an authorization, a permission written by a nurse or bureaucrat which they used as a free pass, They travelled a little everywhere that way, stopping along the line, visiting relatives scattered between Sans-Terre and Tocqueville, where many had modest apartments. They were railway nomads, suddenly disappearing, returning after three days, then leaving straightaway in the opposite direction.
Following the train’s departure, a small crowd inevitably gathered in front of the store. The establishment’s location in the middle of the woods made it the only dispenser of bare essentials, of which speech wasn’t the least. In this backwater the need to communicate created genuine emergencies. People had to show they still existed despite everything; it was particularly meaningful to show it here, right in the face of Grande-Ourses new masters. They had to talk, because to talk was to endure. Moreover, where else could they slake a northerner’s honest thirst for a good price when, having risen early, they’d just thrown up their breakfast?
The Muppet was Grande-Ourse’s most punctual boozer. I’d labelled him as such due to his habit of wriggling