Cowboy. Louis Hamelin

to him and lean over somewhat to make sure you got everything. Contrary to a majority of brothers, sisters, and cousins, Nelson had plans for the future and, each winter, on hills covered in grey pine, he trapped martens to be able to afford his dreams. He wanted to become an engineer, get his pilots licence, and buy a hydroplane. Sometimes the Old Man would vaguely encourage his aspirations. This kind of acceptance of the rules pleased him.

      Young girls from the band got into the habit of surrounding the store each night, a venue more respectable than the hotel after all. The Old Man, filled with impartial clairvoyance, suggested that they came to check out some new guy, evaluate the merchandise, as it were. They’d set out from Flamand’s cabin beside the lake after supper, moving as a group along the railway, leaving it near the overpass, landing on the Outfitters like a volley of birds. Their arrival terrified Benoît, who wasn’t the most sociable individual in such circumstances. His policy dictated that he conceal the pleasure he felt at this feminine invasion. No guilty inclination could get in the way of his business vocation. As soon as the first skirt was spotted in the area, he quickly took refuge behind the counter, stuck to the cash register, as though he feared the lasses would make off with the day’s proceeds.

      This impervious reserve undermined his popularity. Girls would finally get fed up with his grim expression and impassiveness, and I became the new focal point without trying too hard. When, from the confines of my room, I heard the shouts, laughter, and other warbling signalling their visit, I’d spring out of my lair, approaching with studied casualness, calmly going over to lean on a shelf. Their banter, interrupted by brief chases and democratically distributed blows, was quite simply dizzying. Nothing embittered the Old Man so much as this habit of cluttering the premises without the slightest intention of buying anything, of filling all useful space with the wind of frivolous prattle, often chanted in a foreign language, taking out their coin purses only when threatened with expulsion, something never really enforced since the general store couldn’t disregard its status as a public place.

      Salomé’s shyness set her apart from the group. Her integration into the rest of the band, besides, was very relative: remaining stubbornly aloof from the teeming swarm, she looked at the ground, radiating a kind of heavenliness that was the antithesis of the surrounding merriment. She realized I was observing her and took refuge atop the refrigerator whose mass provided soothing warmth.

      The provocative ingenuousness of the gaze the graceful shape of the cheeks the eternal anticipation on the mouth with curled lips the ebony hair the bronzed skin the indecent perfection of the face.

      A precocious tendency for procreating, and the likely influence of genetic programming, determine that most Indian women mature early. Salomé was already approaching the crumbly ridge where she’d stand around the age of sixteen, and the burgeoning was breathtaking. During the peaceful nights that preceded fishing season, she opened the first breech in my vow to practice a little abstinence that summer. She gave me a taste for simply being there, after the meal, when the small troop that scattered through the store was trying to taunt Benoît. Simply being there to look at her, and forgetting she’d someday be twenty, thirty, forty, likely fat and wrinkled, perhaps a boozer, doomed to suffer the fleeting desire of empty-handed fishermen getting loaded at the hotel.

      These young girls, barely emancipated from parental attention, were quickly promoted as baby-sitters, dragging along the most recent offspring of those prolific lineages. And then, carelessly displayed by their elders, the most beautiful tots in the world made their inaugural walks into the world, at my feet. They frolicked like ducklings on the old planks, rolling on the ground, wretched bundles of innocence that the social services had taken from decrepit mothers, relocating them to more stable homes. Their beauty seemed to reach all the way back to the origin, to the hardness of the egg, and I felt that if I’d been able to contemplate an Indian zygote for only a moment, I’d have experienced ecstasy, discovered the crux of everything and swallowed the core of the world.

      Benoît was trying to raise a brimming spoon to his mouth.

      “They’ll burn him, they’ll burn him!” the Old Man repeated, walking back and forth.

      We were seated at the table before bowls of steaming soup. Spoons swirled in the broth and the kitchen echoed with the sounds of our palates. The Old Man, with no request besides silence from warmed throats, was telling his stories. Sometimes it seemed as though only his voice held us in the present. Its music and false notes, distinct tempos, scores, signs and keys, its outbursts, sudden changes from low to high notes (when he’d strive to imitate Mr. Administrator’s tirades) and the intangible structure of his rhythm affected Benoît like an irresistible lullaby. This was the hour when lack of sleep tried to catch up with the manager. The young fellow had the odd habit of drinking five or six instant coffees before turning in. Strange how he didn’t realize the practice caused his insomnia; after all, it’s only a temporary concession to unproductiveness. The Old Man never slept more than four hours a night, and took pompous delight in his ability to bounce to his feet each morning at dawn. At 4:00 a.m. sharp, all the pots and pans rattled at the same time, and the shrillness of the radio took on a chorus of crows getting agitated outside: the Old Man went into action, it was his hour of glory, he reigned on a sleeping world, he made himself useful. His favourite pastime during those moments was to wash the previous day’s dishes and, since he was growing more hard of hearing, the transistor would bellow its stream of crackling at full volume, while the clanging of porcelain rose from the sink.

      This infernal racket cruelly cut short our nights. I’d see Benoît nodding in front of me at the table, the amplitude growing more pronounced with the grating of the elderly human trumpet. He raised his utensil painfully, like the wand of a conductor lacking the strength to reach his crescendo. And then, oops, the spoon deviated from its course, missed its target and Benoît burned his cheek, drenching his lap with wonderful smelling hot soup; he suddenly awoke, cried out, and came to.

      The Old Man would then agree to interrupt the meandering course of his reminiscence.

      “Go to bed, Ti-Kid! Go to bed! You’ll burn yourself!”

      But in the shelter of his pride, Benoît stood firm. And, as though to highlight the danger of any quietude, we immediately heard urgent knocking at the door. Prompted by that signal, he stood up like a robot, turning his head slightly to look at the individual who’d disturbed his lunch. Then, eager to fulfil the requirement of his vocation, he’d hurry to the entrance. Forgetting his own problems, the Old Man would then take pains to go over the flaws and misfortunes of this blasted hamlet, this unredeemable pandemonium whose case could only be settled with a good lock! Everyone got their due; whites and their cowardice, shareholders and their smug ignorance, Indians and their laziness. Indians, those parasites, flea-bitten dogs, thirsty-horned animals only interested in ruining the business of honest citizens and sullying all that Grande-Ourse still had of industriousness!

      To lighten his burden, Benoît was determined to teach me, if not how to count, then at least how to use the machine designed for that purpose. I was a very bad student right from the beginning. It must be said that, amid all the uninhabited space around Grande-Ourse, numbers enjoyed a special status. Appropriate names are a luxury found only with civilization. Over there, people didn’t say at Lake Such and Such, but rather at the ThreeMile Point They didn’t refer to the bridge over a given river, but to the Twenty-Mile Point The land had not been cleared, and therefore had to be explained. The pickup’s odometer took care of place names and, obsessed with distances, people exorcised their seclusion by tossing numbers onto the map. They felt remoteness to be less frightening with those particulars nailed into it. Emptiness faded into the reassuring linearity of a collective consciousness marked with imaginary milestones.

      Patiently and imperturbably, Benoît showed me the cash register’s secrets. He initiated me to the keyboards coded language, acquainted me with the joyful rolling of the till that jingled as it slid on its hinges, taught me the best way to handle crisp banknotes forming wads in different compartments, encouraged me to carefully examine the tape rolling out like a streamer from the top of the machine and, finally, inducted me into the secrets of the safe by entrusting me