Washika by Robert A. Poirier Read Free Book Online Page A

that he never understood, the fire had gone out while he had been off attending to his chores. It was twenty below that night and, even though he had a good down-filled bag to sleep in, he knew what it would be like in the morning if he did not light a fire, and how miserable it would be shivering into his clothes. He crumpled up some paper, set a flame to it and dropped it into the firebox. Instantly, the flames went shooting past the door of the firebox and up into the pipe. For three hours that night P’tit-Gus sat by the stove, listening to the roar of the flames and the cracking of the stove and its pipes as the metal expanded, and he held the damper open with a hunting knife to try to keep the flames down. He sat in the dark in his shack as the light generator had long been shut down. He could smell the heat of the old stove and see the cherry-red circle of heat growing on the wall of the firebox.
    P’tit-Gus learned his lessons well. He remembered, yet there were always the reminders. There was the memory of the grey-white circle on the belly of the old stove to warn him about the lighting of fireboxes half-filled with fuel. There was the stump of an index finger on his right hand. That was from when he was a young boy and had not yet learned to sharpen a scythe without slicing off part of his hand. There was his short, stocky body to remind him of his poor old mother and her constant nagging when he began to use tobacco at the age of fourteen. Then, there were reminders that no one could see. There was one reminder that not even P’tit-Gus could see, but he knew about it and he never talked about it and, always, he tried not to think about it.
    Her name was Claudine and it was a long, long time ago. He was a young man then, full of joy and hope. He was working the lumber camps but he was still able to return to Ste-Émilie every other weekend. During one of these weekends, he met Claudine at a dance at the church hall. He walked her home after the dance that night and it was decided then and there that they were meant for each other. P’tit-Gus was in love and his days could not pass swiftly enough. He worked extra hours to help pass the time, to bring the time closer to when he could be with his Claudine.
    With the extra hours he worked, P’tit-Gus was able to place a down payment on a small but clean two-bedroom house, just below the rapids on the Gens-de-Terre River, where it entered the town of Ste-Émilie. On the weekends when he was in town, P’tit-Gus and Claudine worked in their new house: linoleum on the kitchen floor, curtains for the windows, and boiled linseed oil on the small area of hardwood flooring in the living room. They were to be married in June. Claudine worked as a secretary for an automobile dealer in town. Two car salesmen worked there. One of the salesmen was happily married while the other was known to have ruined more than half a dozen lives. He was a handsome man, and charming, so much so that his very own mother referred to him as a snake in the grass.
    One weekend when P’tit-Gus was in the camp, Claudine worked alone in their little house. She was preparing bed sheets for the new mattress they had purchased. She heard the door open and before she could rise from over the bed the handsome young man from the automobile centre was standing in the bedroom doorway. Claudine had never been with a man before. She and P’tit-Gus had decided to wait until Father Landry had blessed their marriage. The man entered the room. He held Claudine in his arms and before she knew it, this snake in the grass was lying on the bed beside her. He was gentle for such a big man. He caressed her softly and kissed her and, slowly, removed her clothes. Then, he was inside her. Her heart screamed, no! Yet her body squirmed and convulsed to his every touch and finally exploded in waves of pleasure that never seemed to end. And then he left, without a word, not even a kiss. Claudine