Travelling Light (3 page)

“All right,” said Ross.

She took a pair of red-white-and-blue tickets from her purse and showed them to Ross. “Now let's go get a Coke.”

Down on Sherbrooke Street his schoolmates were waiting at the bus stops. He followed Joan into a greasy spoon where the tables smelled of harsh cleaning fluid. They sat in a booth and Joan removed her gloves. A waitress brought their Cokes in bulbous glasses stuffed with ice. Joan took the bundle of cigarettes wrapped in the tissue from her purse and lit one.

“How come you always wear the same dress?”

“Who says I do?”

“Every time I see you, you do.”

“Don't you like it?”

“Well, it's okay.”

“I bought this dress at Holt Renfrew,” Joan said. She puffed hard on her cigarette and the ashes fell off, dropping onto the table. “One lunchtime I went in to buy mascara. I had a few minutes so I went up to the third floor. Mother says I waste money, but what's wasted if it makes you feel good? The first day I wore this dress Monsieur Tremblay stopped and picked me up at the bus stop when I was waiting for the bus home. He was driving his car, and he gave me a lift. We were going along St. Patrick Street and he says, ‘Joan, what a pretty new dress you have on today.'

“He drove me right home. We talked about the Canadiens. I hoped he'd pick me up again but he never has. I tried to see him at work but he's not in my department and he's always busy. I tried phoning him at home but his wife answered. I think she's someone beautiful, like your mother with her pearls.”

That night Ross wrote his parents by flashlight, using red ink. He described Anna's fight with the housekeeper. He told them about Monsieur Tremblay, Joan, and the yellow dress. He told them Joan would be taking him to a hockey game. He said he was looking forward to going to the Forum and watching Beliveau score goals.

Joan arrived at the house on Saturday evening wearing her overcoat with the button missing. Underneath she was wearing the yellow dress. Mrs. O'Brien said if she couldn't look decent she couldn't take Ross to the game. But it was too late for her to go home to change. Mrs. O'Brien took Dr. Ormonde's clothes brush and made Joan stand in the hall while she brushed the overcoat ferociously. “You're the one that needs a brushing!” she said. “If I was strong enough I'd take the back of this to you!”

Finally she let them go, and Ross and Joan hurried to the bus stop at the corner. The evening was cool and shiny and the sidewalks crackled with leftover grit. They caught a bus heading down Côte-des-Neiges and Joan sat with her purse on her lap, smiling and not talking. When the bus began its long swoop down the mountainside, she grabbed Ross's hand and gave a hard squeeze. They got off at St. Catherine Street and joined the crowd streaming towards the Forum. There were policemen on horses, and the hooves made a bright, clapping sound on the road.

Inside the main door of the Forum they handed their tickets to an usher and were swept by the crowd down a passageway. As they came out into the arena, Joan took off her coat and carried it over her arm. They asked another usher for directions and were pointed towards their seats. People turned their heads to watch Joan go by. When they reached the correct row, people stood to let them pass. One or two said hello or
bonsoir
and Joan nodded regally and smiled.

“You promised you wouldn't wear that thing!” said a chubby blonde woman sitting directly above them.

“Ross, this is Molly,” Joan said to Ross. “She was my best friend at the office.”

“You promised you'd turn yourself out tonight,” Molly complained, “and here you are wearing that thing. They'll never take you back. They're running an office, Joan, not a circus where people can wear any old thing.”

No players were on the ice yet but the stands were filling up and the arena felt alive with excitement. The ice gleamed and the air smelled of smoke and steam. Molly introduced her husband, Frank, sitting next to her. Frank worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He had binoculars on a strap around his neck.

“Let me see those, please,” Joan said.

Frank passed her the binoculars and she began scanning the rows of seats below them. Ross saw the two teams step onto the ice from opposite ends of the rink. The goalies skated slowly, like grandmothers, towards their respective nets. Beliveau was the last of the Canadiens to step on the ice, and the crowd roared.

Molly leaned over, tapped Joan's shoulder, and pointed to a couple climbing the stairs. The man wore a dark blue suit and a double-breasted camel-hair coat, and he carried a fedora. The woman wore a mink stole. Ross guessed it was Monsieur Tremblay and his wife. Joan stared through the binoculars. When play was about to start, Frank tapped Joan's shoulder. He wanted his binoculars. Joan handed them over reluctantly.

Beliveau won the face-off and scooped the puck to Yvan Cournoyer, who immediately rushed in on goal. “Shoot! Shoot!” Joan screamed. Cournoyer slapped a shot but the Boston goalie trapped it casually and held on for the whistle.

Halfway through the period there was still no score, and Joan asked Frank for his binoculars. The Tremblays were seated six or seven rows below, next to a skinny little man whom Molly said was vice-president of the company.

Molly leaned over and whispered in Joan's ear.

“I'm not going to do anything,” Joan said. She pressed the binoculars to her eyes. Tonight she smelled of warm wax, Ross thought, like candles being extinguished. Every time the Canadiens had control of the puck and pressed the Boston goal, people around them stood up. Joan stood up too but she kept the binoculars pressed to her eyes.

At the end of the period Boston was ahead by one goal. The Tremblays rose from their seats.

“Want a Coke? Want a hot dog?” Joan asked Ross.

They went downstairs and behind the stands, where the concessions and restrooms were. The cement floor was strewn with litter that had been flattened by thousands of pairs of shoes. Ross noticed the Tremblays in front of one of the booths, sipping drinks from plastic cups. Monsieur wore his camel-hair overcoat draped elegantly across his shoulders, like a cloak.

“Why did he have to bring her?” Joan said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Want a Coke?” said Ross. “I'll buy you one. I have money.”

Then Molly appeared out of the crowd and took Joan's elbow. Molly began steering her towards the ladies' room. “We'll see you back at the seats,” Molly told Ross. “Can you find your own way?”

“Sure.”

Ross joined the line at a concession stand and bought two Cokes in plastic cups. The Tremblays were a few feet away, talking with another well-dressed couple.

A buzzer sounded and people began pressing into the passageway that led to the arena. The second period was about to start. Ross found himself squeezed right behind the Tremblays, close enough to catch a whiff of Madame Tremblay's perfume, the same as his mother's: Chanel No. 5.

The crowd was eager to see the face-off and he was being pushed right up against Monsieur Tremblay. The two cups of Coke were very full. He hadn't had time to snap the lids on and the first time he spilled some, it was an accident. The puck was dropped and the crowd roared and he couldn't see a thing. Then he spilled another splash of Coke onto Monsieur's camel-hair coat. He did it deliberately, not thinking why he was doing it, and not caring if he was caught. It soaked into the camel-hair coat which was the colour of butter, almost. Little brown drops dripped from the hem. But Monsieur didn't turn around — he hadn't felt a thing. Ross knew all about spilled Coke — it was sticky. It made a mess. He kept sloshing Coke out as they started up the steep arena stairs. He was right behind the Tremblays but they didn't turn around; like everyone else they were in a hurry to get back to their seats and enjoy the rest of the game. He had splashed out half of the Coke in both cups before the Tremblays reached their row and people started standing up to allow the couple to get to their seats.

What was left of the Coke he dumped into one cup, dropping the empty on the stairs. When he reached his seat he handed the Coke to Joan and she immediately asked for a straw, which he had forgotten to get, but she drank it anyway, and her eyes kept shifting back and forth, back and forth between the action on the ice and the Tremblays.

In the intermission between the second and third periods the Tremblays stayed in their seats. Frank brought hot dogs for Ross and Joan and Molly. Joan kept the binoculars pressed so hard to her face that they left red rings around her eyes.

“You look like a bird,” said Molly. “A flamingo or something, like in Florida.”

At the beginning of the third period the Canadiens scored two quick goals. Boston came back and tied the game. With two minutes of play left, Ross watched Beliveau charge down the ice, nuzzling the puck on his stick. Beliveau lured the Boston goalie from his crease, shouldered aside a defenceman, and made a deke that had the goalie sprawling on the ice. Then Beliveau flipped the puck over the goalie's prone body into the net.

Everyone was on their feet cheering. Seven rows below, Monsieur Tremblay was hugging his wife. On the ice the Canadiens were dancing on their skate blades and touching Beliveau with the tips of their sticks, hoping for a piece of his magic.

With one minute left in the game, the Tremblays left their seats and began moving towards the exit. Monsieur had a cigar in his mouth; his wife was holding his arm. That was when Joan called, “Hello, Monsieur Tremblay! Hello!”

Monsieur Tremblay glanced over his shoulder. He smiled and waved vaguely in their direction and kept going down the stairs.

“He didn't see me,” Joan said. “He didn't know it was me.” She stood up quickly but Molly and Frank grabbed one of her arms each and pulled her back into her seat as the crowd began chanting, counting down the last few seconds on the clock.

The siren sounded and the Boston players left the ice and fled down a passageway to their dressing room. The Canadiens clustered in front of their bench, hugging their goalie, slapping each other's pads, congratulating each other. People were chanting, “Bel-i-veau! Bel-i-veau!” Joan was the only person in the whole Forum still in her seat. Her coat had fallen on the floor. Ross picked it up and Molly took it from him.

The crowd roared even louder as Beliveau was pushed out from the knot of teammates and started skating a slow victory lap around the rink with long, effortless strides. Beliveau dipped his head from time to time, acknowledging the cheering, and Ross, who couldn't take his eyes from the team captain, felt love sweeping through his body, like wind fluttering a banner.

VOODOO
STARFIGHTERS

I know that she's not crazy. She hears secret messages. Not really secret, but I'm too young to hear them. When the fighters cut across the summer sky — Sabres, Voodoo jets, CF-Starfighters — they split the air like thunder, and my mother goes into her bedroom and hooks shut her door.

Messages come from out on the muskeg late at night, when my father is away on base. Base is sixty miles from our house. I have never seen it. I was born in Montreal and then we went to Germany, but the muskeg swamp is the only home I remember.

When she hears messages, she comes into my room, her feet scraping on the floor. She lights the lamp and wakes me. I know what to do. I kneel and pull the shotgun out from underneath the bed. There are shells in the pine armoire but I don't need them; she doesn't make me take them anymore.

She waits in the room while I go down the stairs and across the kitchen, carrying the 410. Things that once frightened me — the shape of the stove, a kettle hanging from a nail on the wall, a jacket thrown over a chair — are familiar now in moonlight. I unhook the screen door and step out onto the porch. There is the smell of creek water, and sometimes I hear a loon or a beaver tail slapping. I stand for a minute or two with the gun barrel pointed at my toes. I know the Dipper, Orion, the Dog Star. My father says sentries on the base stay awake at night by sorting through the constellations.

I go back inside and upstairs. If she is asleep in my bed, I touch her shoulder to awaken her. After she has gone back to her own room, I slip the gun beneath the bed and put out the lamp.

She and I have always lived at Rockingham. There is no town, only pulpwood loggers, fishing guides, and farmers. The closest town is Saint-Viateur, twenty miles away. On Friday nights my father drives in from base, his car loaded with groceries. He stays two or three days, sometimes longer. He was a pilot in the war. He knows they're watching him at the base, and he hates the checkups the base medical officer puts him through four times a year. Any month, he says, may be his last on the flight list. In the meantime he is still a pilot. Voodoos and Starfighters are his ships.

In the summer mornings I watch the flight break from the western hills and scream down over the swamp. After the planes disappear, the air rings like a plucked wire until the tension breaks with a loud
boom
. Sometimes they sweep around again in formation and come down on a strafing run over the Rockingham–Saint-Viateur highway, checking their airspeed so that six miles away I can hear the howl of the engines.

My father plants the garden on Victoria Day, always blackfly season. We wear hats draped with netting and elastic bands around our sleeves and cuffs. He fertilizes the soil with manure from Maguire's barn, and swamp muck wheeled up the road in a barrow. I construct fences to stop the porcupines, using scraps of wood, chicken wire, mothballs. Our basement is lined with jars and tins of preserves, labelled by year. There is a tin casket for potatoes. We have a chicken house. In the autumn we'll hunt down a moose, haul it home in Maguire's truck, and butcher it in the yard. We have a smokehouse, and my father buys casings from a sheep farmer in Saint-Viateur to make sausage.

When he's on base, I take my mother out in the canoe to gather water lilies. Every year the creek changes course, but the scenery is always the same, with the same gaunt trees lining the banks. She trails her hands in the water. The dead trees are full of nests. Once a bird attacked us and kept attacking us until I stood up in the boat and fought it off with the blade of my paddle.

He drives us to Mass at Saint-Viateur on Sunday. I once lived for four days with the priest when I made my First Communion. At confession before Mass my mother goes into the booth before me and I hear her whispering in French. She never speaks French to my father or me, only to the priest, and sometimes to Maguire or Maguire's wife. After confession she kneels at the altar rail and says penance while the church fills up. When I go into the dark booth, it smells of perfume, and the leather pad is warm and creased where she has been kneeling.

The priest talks in English. “Alexander,” he says, “wouldn't you like to come here to school with us?”

“I can't.”

My father has told the priest I attend school at the base. At the base he tells them I go to school in Saint-Viateur.

“Why can't you?” the priest says.

“I go to school at the base. I'm learning to be a pilot,” I tell him. “They're teaching me Voodoo and Starfighter.”

“I will speak again to your father,” the priest says. Then he coughs, the signal to begin confession. Later, when he says Mass, he wears gold and green robes and the church fills with incense. When it's over and we come out, our car is parked at the curb and my father is eating bakery rolls, drinking coffee from a cardboard cup, and reading a Montreal newspaper spread out over the steering wheel. His black hair is flecked with grey and brushed back against the sides of his head. He wears old khaki trousers and a flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves. One of his forearms is marked with white blotches the size of dimes, shrapnel scars from when his ship was shot down over Germany. There are other scars scattered like coins across his back and shoulders.

He folds the paper and tosses it into the back seat when my mother and I get into the car. “Well, Lucie, did you enjoy yourself?” he says.

“The priest was asking about the schools.”

“Screw the schools,” my father says, starting the car. “He should read the newspaper. Berlin, Cuba — do you know we have bombers in the sky twenty-four hours a day? So do they. School or no school. Missiles everywhere. Underneath the ocean.”

The priest, standing on the steps outside the church, is surrounded by old women. His robes look less wonderful in the sunlight. I can see the cuffs of his ordinary black pants. He is blessing the women one by one, but he's looking at us when we drive away.

“Maybe he's right about the schools,” my mother says.

“You know there's nothing there but lying and catechism. I'd rather have him go to school on the other side. No hocus-pocus in Russia. Maybe later, in Germany, there'll be good schools.”

There is talk on the base of the squadron's being transferred back to Germany.

“It's all so frightful,” my mother says.

“Not to worry. We'll take care of you, won't we, Alex?”

We are heading down Rue Principale towards the gravel highway, passing people walking home from church.

“Can we stop at Pierre Cid's? I need some more shells. I want fishing line and candy. It's Sunday.”

“What shells do you need?”

“One box, twenty gauge.”

“Get any bunnies this week?”

“Two.”

Cid's
magasin général
is at the end of the village. A group of old farmers with pipes sit on the bench in front of the store. A tin thermometer nailed beside the door says
BUVEZ 7 UP
and
ÇA RAVIGOTE
. I go in with my father and take what I need from the shelves.

“Well, Captain,” says Pierre, punching at the register, trying to get the cash drawer to slide open. “Do you think there will be the war?”

“Without a doubt,” my father says in French. “Always.”

“You're right.” The old man struggles with the drawer. He is no good at operating the register and his wife shouts at him when he makes mistakes.

“If it doesn't start over Cuba,” my father says, “it'll start over Berlin. Or Turkey. Laos. Those Chinese islands. If it doesn't start this month it could start next month, or next year.”

“You're right!” The old machine makes a
ting
and the cash drawer slides open.

“Can I get some toffee?” I ask my father.

“One box of Mackintosh, Pierre.”

Mackintosh toffee comes in a cardboard box with the honey-coloured slab of candy wrapped in wax paper. On the drive back to Rockingham I break the slab into small, sweet shards. My mother accepts a single piece but my father hates candy. I put a piece in my mouth and suck the flavour of burnt sugar. If you put your lips over the end of the empty box and blow, it swells up and makes a hoarse, moaning sound. A moose makes that sound when he's been shot — a good shot with a powerful rifle like my father's .30-06 — when he's going down and blood is in his lungs.

The gravel road from Saint-Viateur to Rockingham goes out past woodlots and a sawmill that isn't working. The road is oiled and graded three times a summer. The only traffic we pass is a stake truck hauling pulpwood and two Jeeps from the base. My father drives at sixty. My mother has rolled down her window and put out her arm, and her palm is swooping and diving in the breeze. Gravel spews from the tires and cuts into the bush, snapping and whistling through the leaves.

The turn for our road is at Maguire's. The Maguires are poor and dirty and they say my mother is crazy, they are the ones. Maguire has a boy, Pardieu, who speaks English and French at the same time. He and I sometimes go into the muskeg to kill beavers that dam the culverts beneath our road. Last year Pardieu came with us when we hunted moose. Old Maguire was a soldier in the old, old war; he was gassed and gets money. Last winter he killed a black bear and stretched out the skin on the door of his barn. He said he would take the skin to the base one day to sell it.

Pardieu has only nine fingers. The mother is fat and smells of vinegar. Old Man Maguire smells better, of smoke in the woods. In the springtime they make syrup up in the stand where the maples are. In the winter they cut pulpwood.

When Maguire was nailing up the bearskin, his wife pointed to me and said to her sister from Saint-Viateur, standing on the porch beside her, “
C'est le petit gars là
, the boy in the bush with the crazy woman.”

Maguire's skinny cows are out in the road. My father slows and honks his horn. I lean from the window, put my lips around the Mackintosh box, and blow. “Stop it!” says my mother, putting her hands over her ears.

From Maguire's it is another three miles in to our house. Before we are there our dogs have heard us and are out, dancing in the road. The great thing, my father says, is to be able to anticipate an attack. One war may be over, he says, but other wars always begin.

We spend the afternoon working in the garden. When he's ready to leave, he puts on his uniform and kisses us goodbye. After he has driven down the road my mother brings a chair out to the porch and sits for hours, watching the skeletons of trees against the red evening sky.

My father zips into his sky-blue flight suit and walks out to his ship.

Pardieu comes up the road. We pick up the canoe and carry it to the landing.

My father settles into the cockpit and locks down the canopy. He runs through a check in twenty-five seconds, then ignition.

Pardieu and I lay shotguns in the bottom of the canoe and start paddling. The canoe slides through brackish water. The muskeg smells of animals, birds, rotting pine.

My father has clipped on his oxygen mask and is starting to boost, tapping the throttle stick with the heel of his hand.

We've stopped paddling. We've loaded our guns and are trying hard to listen. The canoe rocks gently on the water.

My father streaks above us all, screaming.