Washika by Robert A. Poirier Read Free Book Online

him.
    â€œWas there anything else?”
    â€œNo, that’s all. Thank you.”
    â€œYou are welcome, Henri.”
    There, it was done. Now all he had to do was to leave.
    â€œ Mademoiselle Archambault?”
    â€œYes, Henri?”
    â€œI’d like to know. What is your first name?”
    â€œLise.”
    â€œMine is Henri.”
    â€œYes, I know.”
    â€œWell, thank you again.”
    â€œYou are welcome.”
    â€œYou want me to shake the mat outside? My boots, you know.”
    â€œNo, do not bother. I will do it later.”
    â€œAll right. Well then, good-bye.”
    â€œGood-bye, Henri.”
    â€œHey! You like raspberries?”
    â€œYes Henri, I like raspberries. Now go, you hear!”
    Lise Archambault, twenty-eight years of age, an excellent nurse, systematic and tidy about everything in her life, a lonely woman who had not made many friends since the dispersal of her graduating class, laughed for the first time in the three long years she had been at Washika.
    Henri opened the door to leave.
    â€œI’ll be back,” he said. “You’ll see. As soon as they’re out, I’ll bring you a pailful.”
    As Henri walked down the gravel road away from the infirmary, Lise Archambault watched him for a long time through the screen door and, after, through the curtained window of her bedroom.

Chapter 7
    A t four o’clock in the morning it was raining and cold. It had been raining softly but steadily since midnight.
    P’tit-Gus walked quickly across the yard. He wore a heavy wool mackinaw with the collar turned up so that, at times, it touched the rim of his hard hat. He was a short, stocky little man and there was a no-nonsense look about him as he made his way from the main camp to the bunkhouse-and-office. With his hand in his pocket, he carried a bundle of newsprint wedged under his arm. Walking along the wet sand and lighting his way with a hunting lamp, he could see his breath in the cold air and the fine drops of rain falling in front of the lens.
    Arriving at the bunkhouse-and-office where six of the students slept, P’tit-Gus scraped his boots on the short length of square timber at the door. He cupped his hand over the latch of the screen door as he opened it and went inside.
    The air in the room was damp. It smelled of tobacco smoke, and fly oil and wet woolen socks. One of the students was snoring.
    P’tit-Gus moved swiftly to the north side of the room where the oil space heater was. It was an older model, a brown, rectangular, upright metal box with a grilled front and a small fuel tank at the back. From the top of the heater, a grey galvanized pipe rose to within two feet of the ceiling, turned sharply, and ran the full length of the room before entering the south wall. Grey metal chairs were scattered around the space heater with wet jeans draped over the backs and, directly over the heater and suspended from a wire hung several pairs of woolen socks of all colours, but most were the grey ones sold at the van, with red and white bars at the tops.
    P’tit-Gus reached around to the back of the heater and turned the flow valve to “half.” He opened the grilled door and then, very quickly, he opened the small round door of the firebox. The hinges were rusted and P’tit-Gus knew the noise they would make if he opened the door slowly. In the twenty odd years he had worked as chore boy in dozens of lumber camps, he had learned about such things.
    P’tit-Gus aimed the light down inside the firebox. He could see the velvety coat of blackness along its wall. At the bottom, the ashes were a dull grey except at the back where the oil had begun to flow and reflect the light of his lamp. He was very careful about things like that. He remembered well that cold February night in another camp when he had come so close to burning his shack to the ground. It was a good old heater, very much like this one but, for some reason