October 1970 (30 page)

VISIT

IN THE TEMPERATE LATITUDES OF
North America, the countryside is at its greenest in the days leading up to the summer solstice. The fields are green. The woods are green. The understory is strewn with green. The light is green. The mountains are green. The lakes are green with the reflection of all this greenery.

It was on this infinite green palette that, leaving the preparations leading up to the Saint-Jean-Baptist Day celebrations, one, two, three, four police cars showed up in the village of Milan, in Quebec's Eastern Townships. In the unmarked car at the front of this convoy, Detective Sergeant Miles “Machine Gun” Martinek rode armed with his inseparable Thompson. He had come from Montreal especially to lead the detachment of Quebec Provincial Police stationed in Lac-Mégantic.

The cars braked, raising clouds of dust; the officers jumped out, ready to charge; Martinek advanced with long, purposeful strides, his machine gun at his hip pointed majestically skyward like a thermonuclear warhead. Two days before the national celebrations, he approached the small farmhouse as though it were a ruined castle filled with fanatical warriors ready to die for their cause.

Inside, Jean-Paul Lafleur and his brother René, Lancelot, and Lou Ballester had no intention of dying for their cause, at least not then. They ran for shelter and disappeared into the attic. Richard Godefroid, with Marie-France and Momo Corbo — a communist taxi driver — welcomed the visitors at the front door. Lancelot's wife, Sylvie, was a few paces behind them, a child hiding behind her skirts.

“You've come to celebrate Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day with us, have you? Well, come on in: we've got lots of beer and plenty of people who know how to sing.”

“Get out of my way, or I'll rip off your arm and beat you with the bloody end
 . . .
”

The police pretended to be ferocious, but they were merely paying a courtesy visit. They appeared to swallow whole the fake names furnished to them by those in the kitchen and refrained from pushing their enquiries further. When they went upstairs and came within a hair's breadth of Lancelot, crouched in the attic and officially on the run, they went back down without breaking anything. Then they took up their tough talk again.

“You know why we're here?” one of them said. “Because your little friends in Saint-Colomban got themselves busted. And Martinek always finds a way to make people talk who don't want to talk
 . . .
”

“We'll be back,” Martinek predicted in a sinister tone.

Before leaving, the officers decided to look around the barn and the buildings.

“You should cut the grass,” one of them called without looking back at the house. With his right foot, he kicked the head off a wild daisy.

That's when Gode, from his vantage point on the porch, saw Brutal, the goat, lying in wait at the edge of the ditch. He checked to see that Corbeau had seen it, too. The latter slowly raised a finger to his lips, which wasn't necessary since both men understood each other perfectly. Gode turned back to look toward the grassy ditch. Behind the goat, he now saw clots of dried mud flying in the air, kicked up by the virile caress of a split hoof.

The goat's rage sent up clumps of grass from the edge of the ditch, and then he charged, head down. The next instant, Sergeant Martinek dropped his machine gun and took off with his legs around his neck. From the porch, Gode and Corbeau saw him cross in front of the house, running, running, like Francis Macomber in the Hemingway story being chased by the lion. Behind him came the stinking goat, hot on his heels. A car door slammed and there came a loud BOING! that must have been heard all the way to the top of Mégantic Mountain. Brutal charged the cars twice more before making a dignified retreat. That winter, Lionel Arcan, the man who owned the body shop in Lac-Mégantic, had his trip to Florida paid for by the Quebec Provincial Police.

SHORT TRIP

THE CHIC-CHOC MOUNTAINS ROSE ABOVE
the sparkling sea. The Chevrolet clung to their flanks with Justin at the wheel. Jean-Paul was in the passenger seat, and Ti-Ben Desrosiers, whom they'd picked up drunk in Old Montreal before leaving, was snoring like a pig on the back seat.

“At his age,” said Jean-Paul, raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, “you don't think about anything but fucking, eating, and sleeping.”

“You forgot one important thing: shitting,” said Justin Francœur, with a hearty smile.

The slight smile he drew from Jean-Paul in return was a small but important victory. He hadn't been lucky enough to have had a worker for a father, as his passenger had. His father had been from Outremont and was a top-level civil servant in Pierre Trudeau's government. Francœur was Lancelot's brother-in-law and a newcomer to the group, in genuine revolt against his father. Although he lived and slept revolution, for the moment had to content himself with being a chauffeur for the elder Lafleur. A Lafleur, moreover, who was more distant than ever, preoccupied as he was by the raid in Saint-Colomban, and then the discovery of the farmhouse in Milan by the police two days later. His whole political organization was on the verge of collapse.

They dropped Ben off in Gaspé, went in for a coffee themselves, then drove on through Percé to the top of Aurore, where they pulled over onto the gravelled terrain of a rest stop, marked by a row of wooden guard rails painted white. They parked a short distance from the kiosk. Picnic tables were lined up in the open air. There was no one else around.

Francœur had been at the wheel all night. He shut the motor off and leaned the back of his head against the headrest. Jean-Paul, who'd been dozing, opened his eyes and looked around. He winced, a hand raised above his eyes to ward off the sun, which, although low in the sky above the sea, still shone into the car.

“Wow.”

From where they sat they could see only the top of the famous rock emerging from a cloud bank that looked as thick as whipping cream. Farther out, Île Bonaventure was a lump in the fog that lay between the earth and the horizon.

“What time is it?”

“Almost six,” Justin replied.

Jean-Paul leaned back against the door for a last short nap.

Justin's eyelids became heavier and heavier. He saw a human form approach his side of the car, and when he lowered the window a travelling salesman leaned in toward him.
It's the Sand
man
, Justin thought, and when he looked down at the salesman's hand, it was held out toward him with nothing in it but a handful of golden sand, a small placard stuck in the middle that read
MADE IN JAPAN
. Then the roar of a Harley broke the silence that had descended around the stationary Chevrolet, and the two men woke with a start.

Shortly after that,
Maître
Brien, perched on his motorcycle, made his entrance onto the panoramic parking spot. No helmet. Long hair kept down by a scarf knotted Apache style around his head, wearing a deerskin vest, fringes flying in the wind, and with a beautiful hippie chick riding behind him.

“Wait for me here,” said Jean-Paul, getting out of the car.

Justin watched them discussing something for about fifteen minutes, standing at the edge of the cliff and paying no attention either to the girl beside the guardrail who remained sitting with the Harley's saddle between her long legs, or to him, at the wheel of the parked car. He eyed the girl through the windshield. Brown hair, all legs, braless and buxom under her Indian blouse. She seemed royally unconcerned with his existence, kept her head turned toward the fog-enveloped sea, not moving except occasionally to shake a stray strand of hair from her field of vision. She displayed the patient passivity of an angel. A woman on the fringes of danger, enjoying every minute of it. He wanted to jump her so badly he wanted to cry.

Still talking, the lawyer went over to sit at one of the picnic tables and took out a pocket mirror and a razor blade and had himself a snort. Then he handed Jean-Paul a large brown padded envelope. They broke up shortly after that, Brien returning to sit astride his motorcycle and Jean-Paul getting back into the car with his envelope. The two men watched the lawyer give a gallant slap to the thigh of his passenger, then start the Harley with a kick of his boot heel.

“I thought he'd be pissed with me,” Jean-Paul said.

“Oh yeah? What for?”

“For getting him up so early. It's not his style. But I wanted us to meet undisturbed.”

“And?”

Justin watched the motorcycle move off in the distance, the girl on the back, her arms wrapped around Mario Brien's body, her long hair streaming out behind her in the wind, like the train of a dress.

“Looks like I worried for nothing,” Jean-Paul said after a while. “He wasn't sleeping.”

“Ah.”

“If you ask me, that's probably what they're going back to do now.”

“Ah-ha. And what are we going to do?”

Jean-Paul found himself a comfortable position in the car seat.

“We're going back to Montreal.”

Jean-Paul slept until Newport. When he opened his eyes, the car had slowed down to a walking pace, then drew to a complete stop. Lafleur sat up and saw some kids by the side of the road, brandishing little wooden sailboats and running to catch up with the car.

“Kids selling sailboats!” murmured Jean-Paul. “We must be in Newport.”

He lowered his window, took one of the boats, gave it a glance, and handed it to Justin. About fifty centimetres long, carved entirely by hand and all in wood. The sails were made of birchbark.

“How much do they want for it?” Francœur asked.

The shouts of the little band rose from the roadside.

“I can't understand a word they're saying
 . . .
”

“They're speaking Paspayan, that's why. It's a local dialect.”

Jean-Paul exchanged a few words with the kids.

“Too expensive. Give them a fiver and they'll take it.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why not?”

“Don't you see how much work's gone into this thing?”

“I know, but they always ask too much, just in case. They think we're American tourists.”

“You think they can't see our Quebec plates?”

“You're right. They're a bunch of fucking thieves
 . . .
Five bucks is too good for the little bastards.”

“Well, at least you know it's not made in Japan. The sum of work in one of these boats. How many hours, do you think?”

“The sum of work? What's that, some kind of Marxist shit?”

Justin had taken two twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and was holding them between his fingers. Jean-Paul took one of them and dangled it out of his window. The gamins pounced on it like a bunch of starved fledgling birds on a piece of bread.

Francœur started the car, the model boat resting on the back seat.

“Did you see how they were dressed? Bare feet on that gravel? It's like we're in the Third World.”

“I could show you villages up in the mountains behind here that would give you more than just an impression. It pretty much
is
the Third World. We're in Robin Hood land here. The Kingdom of Cod.”

They were quiet for a while, following the curve of Baie-des-Chaleurs, watching flashes of sunlight on the indentations in the cliffs.

“You see, Jean-Paul, you can't denounce the fish-processing plant that steals from them and the forest companies that make them sleep in school buses and the mine that sends them digging deep into the earth, and then refuse to pay child labour its true worth. That's called a contradiction.”

“You're beginning to make me sick with all your phrases that are only found in books.”

“What's in the envelope? It looks heavy
 . . .
”

“None of your business.”

“Oh, I get it. I'm stuck driving a nonstop round trip from Montreal to Percé, and I have to keep my mouth shut.”

“I don't know you well enough yet.”

They retreated to silence and, shortly afterward, Jean-Paul fell asleep. Not much later, Justin almost joined him, but jerked the wheel just in time to bring the nose of the Chevy back between the lines on the bridge spanning the Cascapédia. Suddenly awake, Jean-Paul looked around with a lost air. They stopped at the first hotel they came to and took a room: Chez Guité, in Maria. Jean-Paul paid cash while Justin stretched his legs on the shore.

The tide was out, the sound of waves seemed far off, the air smelled of seaweed. The wet stone pillars of a dismantled wharf poked out of the water to the east like the backbone of a large fossilized dinosaur. Clusters of mussels attached to bunches of sea-wrack and the shells of crabs, turned over and cleaned out by gulls, littered the pebbled beach.

He found Jean-Paul stretched out on one of the beds, fully clothed. The TV was on, tuned to a local program of indescribable boredom. This was followed by Kraft Cinema, showing
A Fistful of Dollars
, sliced up to make room for ads for mayonnaise and some substance that passed for cheese.

Justin took the car along the seafront to buy takeout club sandwiches and fries from a restaurant called the Barli-Coo.

“You know what?” he said when he got back. “The guys at the restaurant say that the biggest salmon in the world come from this area. From the Cascapédia, all along here. Jackie Kennedy fishes here. It belongs to some Americans. It's people like that that we have to get rid of.”

Jean-Paul said nothing. His mouth was full. Justin felt encouraged to follow up on his thoughts.

“Our comrades have been caught in Saint-Colomban, and the farm in Milan is known to the police. No more People's Prison. The network is completely busted up. All we have left is the house on rue Collins. It's going to take a lot of money to rebuild a solid organization. You're so desperate that you have to listen to me
 . . .
Now, imagine holding Jackie Kennedy prisoner in one of these fishing lodges, way up in the mountains, somewhere between New Richmond and Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. How much do you think Daddy Onassis would pay to get her back? Ten million? Twenty?”

“I don't think they're still together.”

“Oh
 . . .
”

“We'd have to find out first, in any case.”

Justin Francœur barely finished the last bite of his club sandwich before falling asleep. When he woke up, Lafleur was snoring in the bed beside his. The sound was rhythmic and also very strong.

Francœur wanted to see the sea again, so he tiptoed to the door. Before getting there, his eyes fell on the brown envelope lying on the end table. He didn't hesitate for a second. He went over to it, picked it up, hefted it in his hands, squeezed it. Then, without making a sound, he undid the metal clip that kept it shut, all the while keeping an eye on the sleeping mound slowly rising and falling with the ample oscillations of deep sleep. He felt the contents of the envelope before pulling them out: a wad of twenty-dollar bills. There were more inside. Several thousands of dollars worth
 . . .

Easily enough to finance two or three kidnappings.