Two Solitudes (10 page)

“That means your Pa must've got back from Ottawa last night,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I bet he must have a lot on his mind.”

Paul had nothing to say to this. Drouin shook his head again. “Your Pa smokes too much. He wants to look out for the ulcers.”

Paul's eyes, dark brown and wide-set, were unusually earnest. “What are they?”

“You get them from smoking too much. An uncle of mine, he smoked like a stove, all the time his pipe, and he got them. He died last year.” Drouin shook his head and leaned forward on his elbows again and became silent.

The other men in the store were also quiet. They knew each other too well to feel that talk was necessary. The principal news was the weather, but they had finished discussing that. Paul drifted away from the counter and tried to peer beyond some food advertisements in the window to see if Captain Yardley was coming. He had promised to meet him at the store this morning. There was no sign of the captain so he turned back. He always liked it here. He liked the smell of raw, useful merchandise mingled with the strong odour of tobacco burning in old pipes. He liked looking at the bags of feed and the farm tools and listening to the monosyllables as the men talked.

Frenette was built like a hogshead. He was wearing an old pair of overalls and heavy farm boots. He lurched away from the end of the counter and moved toward the boy. His huge hand, thick with bone and black with hair, tapped the papers under Paul's arm. A grin opened his wide face. “What's the news today, Paul?”

He took the papers from under the boy's arm and spread them out on the counter. The English paper he pushed aside, but he followed the headlines of
La Presse
with his forefinger, pronouncing each word aloud. “Bad, eh?” he said. “You see
this? The English, they put everyone in the army and still they lose the war.”

He handed the papers back to Paul and the boy folded them and replaced them under his arm. The door opened and two more men came in. One was a farmer from the upper end of the parish, the other a hired man from the farm beyond Yardley's. They were both lean, with earth-coloured faces and drooping moustaches and sun-squinted eyes. Nods were exchanged as they slumped into comfortable positions against the counter.

“The weather, she's a bastard for sure,” said one of them.

Drouin took two plugs of Master Mason and tossed them onto the counter. Each of the newcomers extracted a ten-cent coin from a pocket, dropped it on the counter, picked up a plug, bit off a chew and slipped the plug into another pocket. Their actions were automatic and almost in unison.

“Three pounds of sugar,” the farmer said.

Drouin set a pan on the scale and began scooping out sugar from a large white bag behind the counter while the farmer kept his eyes carefully on the scale, making sure that Drouin's finger did not lie on it while he calculated the weight. The sugar was poured into a paper bag and passed over the counter. The farmer paid for it and let it lie there.

“You hear the news from Sainte-Justine?” the hired man said.

Drouin shook his head slowly and Frenette lifted his chin to show he was listening. Bissonette gave no sign of interest.

“Some soldiers came in there last night. They walked around the town, trying to get people talking. Then they started throwing some liquor around. Then, round about midnight it was, they went up to Etienne Laflamme's place and took Napoléon–that's Etienne's oldest boy–right out of his bed.”

“The hell they did!” Frenette said.

“Yeh,” the hired man went on, “and Etienne's old woman screeching like a wildcat and the soldiers, the bastards, talking about a warrant. They took Napoléon right out in his drawers.”

“Tabernacle!” shouted Frenette, waving his arms about.

“The old woman couldn't get over that. The kid dragged out in his drawers. She had Napoléon's other pair in the wash and he was dragged out in his old ones. That's what bothered her.”

Frenette banged his fist down on the counter and began to shout. In his lumber-camp days he had been a dangerous man on a Saturday night. He still liked to fight after he had a few
whiskey blanc
if he could find anyone to stand up to him. “Just let the English come here!” he kept saying. “Let them see what happens if they try to get me!”

“Well,” the farmer said, “there's nothing Etienne can do now. They got Napoléon in uniform already, sure enough.”

“All you bastards,” Frenette said, “you sit around here saying there's nothing to do now. We'll find something to do!”

Drouin leaned a little further over the counter. “Mr. Tallard can do something, maybe?”

He looked around for Paul and when he found him he stopped. The boy had moved quietly away from the counter when the two strange men came in. In the middle of the floor was a model Percheron stallion. It stood there lifesize with a whole set of harness on its back. Drouin had got it cheap at a fire sale in Sainte-Justine. He was very proud of it and thought it more handsome than a statue in the church. Paul began to finger the harness while his ears listened. It was not the first time men in the store had begun to talk about his father and then stopped abruptly when they remembered he was there.

Frenette said, “Listen, Paul–what about your brother? Is this true what I hear, that Marius goes into the army soon?”

Drouin coughed but Frenette paid no attention. Paul came shyly out from behind the horse. “Marius is in college,” he said.

“Sure, sure,” Frenette said. “But just the same…”

“Heh,” Drouin said. “You think Mr. Tallard will stand for it if they put the conscription onto his own son?” He spread his hands as though he were measuring cloth. “You can push Mr. Tallard just so far.” He showed how far with his hands. “Then you better watch out!”

Suddenly Ovide Bissonette, on the overalls table, woke up. “What's that you say?” he squeaked in a high, cracked voice. “What about Mr. Tallard?”

Paul looked at him in fascination. Everyone knew that Ovide was crazy. Years ago he had been a trapper in the far north and the men said the loneliness had touched his head. Now he did nothing but loaf around the store, and on Monday mornings he was supposed to sweep the burnt matches off the steps of the church. Sometimes he took out his beads in the store to tell them, no matter what was going on, but generally he slept on the overalls table with his eyes wide open. Now he pointed a scrawny hand at the group of men in front of the counter. “Mr. Tallard, he goes to hell maybe. But his wife, she goes for sure.”

“Shut up,” Drouin said. He grinned at Paul and revolved a finger at his temple. “You don't mind him, Paul. He don't know what he says.”

But Paul did mind just the same. The priest had told him all about hell and how the fire was real except that it replenished the flesh the instant it burned it off so the burning went on forever. He wished Captain Yardley would come. Again he
retreated behind the horse, hoping the men would forget about him. He occupied himself with an examination of the farm tools racked on that side of the store. There were rakes, axes, hatchets, hoes, spades, scythes, and even trowels. He picked up an adze. Captain Yardley was wonderful with an adze. He had watched him use one to shape the keel of the ship he had made.

In front of the counter the men were still talking. “The war ought to stop,” one said.

“Sure.”

“Look at Mrs. Pitre of the back concession.”

“What about her?”

“Before the war she had seven children and they all lived. Since the war she's had three and they all died. The war ought to stop.”

“The trouble with the English is they got no moderation,” Drouin said. “Now me, I'm behind the war all right, only not too much.”

Paul went to the window and looked out again. This time he saw Captain Yardley coming down the road, moving with his bobbing limp. He went to the door and waited for him. When John Yardley entered the store with the boy at his side he greeted the group of men amiably and asked for his mail. Drouin handed over a letter and a newspaper and said politely, “The news looks not so good today, eh, Captain?”

Yardley passed his eyes over the headlines of the
Gazette
and his lips tightened as he read.

“Looks like we lose the war, eh, Captain?” Frenette said.

Yardley shook his head. “That's one thing you're wrong about.”

“A lot of other people got different ideas maybe.”

Yardley looked at the blacksmith and then he grinned. He began to talk fast in his bad French. “Now you listen,
Alcide. You fellas around here are just trying to get me sore, talking thet way. You know goddam well we don't lost this war, and you know you don't want to lose it, either.”

Frenette grinned. From any other Englishman he would not have taken Yardley's words. But he knew the captain well by now and liked him and that made the difference. Yardley simply took it for granted that he was liked.

“I never said I wanted to lose the war, Captain. No. But you tell me what difference it makes if we do.”

“I'll tell you,” the farmer said. He did not know Yardley well and regarded him as a complete foreigner. “You listen and I'll tell you.”

“All right,” Yardley said. “Go ahead.”

“Right now in the winters,” the farmer said, choosing his words slowly, “me and the kid, we go north to saw wood for the English lumber company. Him on one end of the cross-cut saw and me on the other, we saw wood for the English.”

“You mean, you saw it for a dollar-fifty a day,” Drouin said.

The farmer's sharp, chewing voice went right on, paying no attention to the interruption. “Now suppose we win the war. What happens? Me and the kid, we go on sawing the wood, same as now.” He paused and then went on. “But suppose we lose it? Maybe I keep on sawing, same as before. But goddam it, this time I got an Englishman on the other end of that saw, for sure.”

Yardley grinned and the other men guffawed. “I don't blame you fellas for how you feel,” the captain said. “Guess I'd feel the same way if I was you. Only I'm not, so I don't.”

He started for the door and Paul followed him outside, the store silent behind them. Yardley looked at the clouds blowing through the sky and smelled the earth and wished it
were not earth he was smelling but salt water. He hungered for a smell of the sea. One thing he had never grown accustomed to in Quebec was the way the weather jumped about. Down in Nova Scotia you could tell a change of weather hours ahead. All you had to do was look at a pennant on a masthead or the drift of chimney smoke and gauge the wind, and then you knew. Up here even a barometer fooled you.

He said to Paul, “Two months more and we'll all go fishing. You and me and Daphne and Heather. My granddaughters. They're coming out to visit me.”

Paul's dark, grave face did not alter expression. “P'pa says no.”

“He forgets how old you are. When I was your age I was bait-boy.”

“What's that?”

“We used to go out in big yellow dories, myself and some men in sweaters and oilskins and sou'westers, and we'd go after the cod off the ledges. I'd keep the lines baited while the men fished. Clams, I used. Why sure–you're old enough to row a boat all by yourself.”

Paul felt better. Anything was all right if the captain said so.

They had left the houses of the village behind and the wind was so strong Paul's cap nearly blew off. “Captain Yardley…” he began, trying to hold the cap with one hand and his father's papers with the other. When he said nothing more the man looked down and saw that the boy was worried about something. He seemed to be sealing himself away into his worry, wanting to be coaxed, with a child's caution wanting to make sure he was safe before he said anything about his troubles.

“Go ahead, Paul. You know you can talk to me about anything's on your mind.”

They walked on in silence for a while, and then Paul said, “They were saying something in the store about Marius. About Papa and Marius.”

“Well.–I guess thet's nothing new.”

“Will Marius have to be a soldier?”

“Lots of men are, these days. It's not so bad, being a soldier.”

He quickened his pace, feeling something of the boy's nameless apprehension. There had been a small but noticeable rise in feeling against Athanase in the village lately. It would come into the open if Marius were conscripted. Even Yardley could see that Athanase's stand on the war was not understood here at all. If Marius were conscripted and his father did nothing to keep him out of the army, it would appear to the parish that Athanase was deserting his own family, and that was an unforgivable sin. Yardley preferred not to talk to Paul about Marius. He had met the elder Tallard son only once, but it was long enough to realize that he was one of the few people he knew who would not let himself be liked. Marius seemed to Yardley to be the mathematical product of the conflict within the country and also within his own family.

“Gosh, but Marius hates the English!” Paul said. “That's why he hates Mother.”

“Go easy there, Paul. He don't hate your mother.”

“Oh, yes, he does. I know. I think he hates P'pa, too, only he's afraid of P'pa. Captain Yardley?”

“Yes?”

“Will Marius kill an Englishman if they try to put him in the army?”

“He wouldn't know how.”

“Is it hard to kill someone?”

“Well, you got to know how to go about it.”

“Did you ever kill anyone, Captain Yardley?”

“Never did. But thet nigger I shipped with out east–I saw him kill a fella once.”

Paul stopped in the middle of the road. “How?”

Yardley felt better with the talk off the Tallard family. “Well, this nigger had the biggest moustache I ever saw. It was so long thet when he went to sleep he used to pass the ends of it behind his ears and make them fast with a reef knot, end to end behind his head. Otherwise it was always ketching into things when he was sleeping in his hammock. Well, one night–”