The Broken Blade Read online

  The other night Father explained, “Rough handling means days lost in repairs, and lost days is lost dollars to the North West.”

  Pierre took his place among the twelve middlemen in his canoe. Someone on the bank fired a pistol, and the crowd cheered. As the men around him shouted farewells, pierre waved his cap toward his family and called, “goodbye.” his stomach sank at how final that word sounded this morning.

  Charbonneau pushed the stern of Pierre’s canoe clear of the shallows. “To the North,” he called, and the bowman La Londe let out a whistle from his post and waved his paddle overhead.

  Without another word, the men suddenly dipped their paddles in unison. Struggling to catch up, Pierre grabbed his blade and pulled hard.

  There was a whirl of color as five dozen paddles turned the river to froth. As the canoes started up the river, Pierre’s dog, Pepper, and a few other dogs ran along the shore, barking. Every year these first miles proved who had the fastest canoe, and as long as they were within sight of shore, the men would pull for all they were worth.

  Charbonneau’s canoe held its position in the middle of the brigade until they were a quarter of a mile out. Then the fourth canoe crept past. Pierre tried to keep up with the windmilling blades around him. He prayed they could hold off the last canoe until they rounded the southern tip of Lachine and passed from the crowd’s view. Pierre knew his father was watching from shore. Each spring Father studied the first brigades to depart. He always scorned the last canoe out as “a sad excuse for ca-noemen.”

  La Petite was chanting an old French song from the stern of the trailing craft. “Row brothers, row,” he sang. “The river runs fast. The daylight fades fast …” Pierre knew that good singers were prized as voyageurs. A lively little middleman named Michel Larocque helped the bowman, La Londe, lead the same chant in Pierre’s canoe.

  “Put your backs into it,” Charbonneau commanded.

  “Give it all you’ve got, fellows,” La Londe sang out, in a voice rich and loud like Pierre’s father’s.

  Pierre paddled as hard as he could. He knew they would blame him, as the youngest member of the crew, if they fell behind. Studying Emile, who was sitting right in front of him, Pierre leaned forward with each stroke and jerked back hard, trying to match his pace.

  They kept up until Charbonneau turned his canoe around the southernmost point of Lachine. There La Petite cut between them and the shore. As he glided past, he called, “Paddle, Grandpa. Paddle,” and laughed. “You’ll not get home before the frost if you drag your blade that slow.”

  The men in both canoes joined in the fun. “Grandpa?” Charbonneau echoed. “That’s a good one.”

  Pierre’s face, flushed from exertion, reddened even more. He swallowed his anger and pulled fierce and deep on his paddle.

  An hour later, the canoes had settled down to a moderate pace, but Pierre’s arms were aching, his back was sore, and his hair was plastered to his temples with sweat. How could he ever paddle twenty-four hundred miles? His father warned him, too, that poor weather could extend the twelve-week trip by a month or more.

  To break the monotony he counted his strokes. One, two, three … he silently marked each pull. At first it took his mind off the pain, but by the time he got to five hundred, he knew he’d made a mistake. Pierre glanced over his shoulder, amazed at how slowly they were moving. He could run that far in five minutes.

  To cheer the men on, La Londe and Michel Larocque started up another song, but Pierre didn’t listen. He counted instead. When he got to his thousandth stroke he refused to look back. By the time he reached two thousand, he realized it was taking as much effort to count as it was to paddle, but he kept at it just the same. Just to prove that he could, he would count this day through to the end.

  Pierre thought back to school, recalling how he could balance a quill pen on the back of one finger and feel no weight. Right now he would trade places with anyone in his classroom. Pierre was a boy who liked to curl up with a book and ponder and dream, but he could already see there would be no time for dreaming in this life.

  Lift. Pull. Lift. Pull. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty … His paddle felt like iron. As Pierre labored, he recalled a poem that Sister had him memorize last month. Telling the story of a hero called Aeneas who was cursed by the gods, the poem began:

  Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by fate

  And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate

  Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore

  Long labors both by sea and land he bore.

  When Pierre thought about the many years Aeneas wandered after the Trojan War, he was ashamed to be exhausted after only a single morning of paddling.

  “Demi-chargé!” the steersman yelled.

  Pierre looked up. They were at the base of a short rapids and had to paddle double-time against the current. “I said, ‘Demi-chargé,’” Charbonneau shouted, tipping Pierre’s cap off with his long setting pole. The men laughed as Pierre ducked to grab his cap.

  Though the current was swift, it was no match for their paddles. The moss-crowned rocks blurred beneath the white hull as Charbonneau chanted in military cadence: “Pull, pull, pull …” Out of the corner of his eye Pierre saw the muscles stand out on Charbonneau’s forearms as he planted his setting pole and pushed hard.

  At the top of the short cascade La Londe shouted, “Hard now!” and pulled double-time with his paddle. The bow rose and then fell as the canoe cut through the white funnel at the head of the rapids and glided into a still pool.

  “Well done, gentlemen,” said La Londe. Five dozen middlemen cheered and waved their paddles. Pierre knew if a canoe could be paddled up a rapids or pulled up with tracking ropes, the crew had reason to celebrate. There was no harder job than portaging their ninety-pound bales around the places in the river that were too dangerous to paddle. Smart voyageurs would gladly paddle five miles out of their way to avoid even a half-mile carry.

  At the head of the pool stood the little stone church of St. Anne, the patron saint of the voyageurs. Pierre’s father often spoke of this place. Here North West traders and explorers paused to ask a blessing for their journeys.

  Suddenly the cheering crewmen went silent. Still gasping for breath from his hard paddling, Pierre looked up to see the men in the lead canoe take their caps off all at once. A lone canoe approached the landing below the church, carrying a wooden coffin.

  Emile asked Charbonneau, “Is that Bourgone?”

  Charbonneau nodded. “One more cross for the Calumet.” Pierre had heard of the famous crosses that marked the graves of voyageurs who died en route. “His name was Amble Bourgone,” Charbonneau continued. “He drowned in the upper Ottawa just before freeze-up. His crewmen just dug his body out of its winter grave.”

  Though the day was warm, Pierre shivered at the thought of a body lying frozen beneath the snow. He imagined foxes and wolves pawing at the piled stones of the cairn, and mice seeking shelter in the corpse’s pockets.

  After the canoe and coffin passed, the men stopped by the church of St. Anne to make an offering. Pierre’s arms ached as he stepped ashore. One by one they deposited their coins in the box at the front of the chapel and stepped inside to cross themselves and whisper a prayer. Even Mr. McKay dropped some money into the box.

  Later the men lit clay pipes and sat quietly at the river’s edge. A few walked off to be alone. This place marked the official beginning of their journey, yet no one looked north. Pierre stared at the dark green hills that lay upriver, wondering what they held.

  When he finally turned his eyes toward home, his throat went tight. Father should be here, not me, he thought.

  He closed his eyes and saw the flash of the blade and the blood. He saw the doctor reach for his black thread and bright needle. A hundred times he’d played the scene over in his mind, and it was always the same. He felt shame in his laziness and shame in knowing he wasn’t brave enough to wish the stroke had fallen on his own hand instead.

&nb
sp; “You ready to go?”

  It was Emile Duval, his old schoolmate. Pierre nodded and stood up. Though Emile was two years older than Pierre, he’d been in the same grade. A tough farm boy, Emile wasn’t stupid, but he often got behind by missing school during the planting and harvest seasons. Emile was known for his curly black hair, and he had a nervous habit of brushing his bangs away from his eyes.

  As they walked to the waiting canoes, Emile grinned. “Paddling sure beats reciting those Latin poems of Sister’s, don’t it?”

  Pierre smiled weakly, thinking just the opposite. Unless the paddling got a whole lot easier, he’d prefer Latin any day.

  CHAPTER 5

  Massacre Island

  BY LATE AFTERNOON the brigade reached the wide place in the Ottawa River called the Lake of Two Mountains. Pierre’s hands were puffy and blistered from paddling. His arms and shoulders ached, and his shirt was soaked with sweat.

  Charbonneau commanded, “Ship oars,” and Pierre and the crewmen rested their paddles on the gunwales.

  “That’s only twenty-five miles today, fellows,” the steersman said, “but we make up for our holiday tomorrow on the Long Sault.”

  Pierre wanted to ask Charbonneau if he was joking about today being a holiday, but he feared Charbonneau was serious.

  Just then, McKay and La Petite pulled alongside.

  “So which camp will it be, sir?” La Petite asked.

  “We usually take the north,” McKay replied.

  “It’s the north shore then,” Charbonneau agreed, adding, “How about a little race to see who tends the fires tonight?”

  La Petite looked toward Pierre. “Are you sure you’re up to it with that crew of babies?”

  A shout rose above the other voices. “Last canoe to shore gathers the wood!”

  Yells went up from the other crewmen, and in an instant the water was churning with the force of seventy paddle blades. Amazed at the sudden energy, Pierre did what he could.

  It was less than a half mile to the campsite, but that was too far for Pierre. Once he slipped on his forward stroke and splashed Emile. Another time his paddle twisted sideways. Charbonneau yelled, “Pull, La Page. Pull!” His voice was a whiplash.

  Pierre glanced over his shoulder for help. Charbonneau nodded urgently at his own paddle and made a smooth stroke in the water, but Pierre’s tired muscles managed only a weak chop.

  By now the blisters on his right hand were bleeding.

  When the last canoe in the brigade passed them, Charbonneau said, “Another day, men,” and they slowed to their normal pace. No one was in a hurry to reach shore with teasing so sure to come.

  Can one bad paddler in twelve mean that much? Pierre wondered. If he didn’t improve, he knew he would be a burden to the whole crew. He remembered his father’s advice: “Pull your own weight and you’ll find no better friends than your canoe mates.”

  La Petite was waiting on the beach. “Glad to see you made it, fellows,” he called. “I thought maybe you got lost and we needed to put together a search party.” The crewmen laughed. Pierre hunched down and tried not to be noticed.

  Even the quiet one, Bellegarde, joined in. “Eh, ladies,” he called out as they unloaded, “you need some help maybe with those heavy parcels? Ha, Ha. It was a big day shopping, no?”

  The catcalls continued as they carried the freight up the bank. After they finished, Charbonneau asked Pierre, “How’s my middleman?” Though Charbonneau’s voice was kind, his eyes were the cold gray of a soldier on a mission. Pierre could tell he hated weakness.

  “Fine, sir,” Pierre said, hiding the crusted blood on his palm.

  But La Londe was right behind them. He took hold of Pierre’s hand and turned it over. “It’s the right one, eh? The hand closest to the water always takes a beating. The water softens the skin.”

  “It’s all right.” Pierre closed his hand as tightly as he could.

  “Just the same,” Charbonneau said, “we’ll keep you on the port side tomorrow. The sore one should dry out then.”

  La Londe agreed. “That should help. My hands were plenty soft when I was your age.” Pierre couldn’t imagine the broad-shouldered bowman ever having anything but callused hands, but he appreciated La Londe’s gentle and fatherly tone. Pierre prayed that their plan would work. He worried that another day of paddling would turn his palm into mincemeat.

  Gathering firewood was not as bad as Pierre expected. It felt good to work the kinks out of his legs, and he tried to carry more than his share of the wood.

  As he bent to collect some kindling, Pierre felt the pain in his bottom for the first time. He wondered if the thin slats of the canoe seats could leave permanent creases on his backside.

  Emile Duval approached him. “If you feel a little stiff, that’s normal,” Emile said, brushing a shock of hair out of his eyes.

  “How long does it last?” Pierre asked. He was grateful for Emile’s concern, and he knew that Emile would tell him the truth.

  “In a couple of weeks you’ll feel like you’ve been canoeing your whole life,” Emile assured him. “Besides”— he grinned—“paddling is nothing compared to a day with Naggy Maggie.”

  Pierre smiled, recalling the nickname the older boys called Sister Marguerite. Pierre had to admit that Sister could be mean at times, especially to the poorer students. “How nice of you to grace us with your presence, Monsieur Duval,” she would greet Emile when he returned to school after a week of work in the fields.

  Emile meant to comfort Pierre, but two weeks sounded like forever. Since Emile was used to plowing and grubbing stumps and pitching hay, paddling was like a vacation for him. But the small chores Pierre had done around his cabin left him unprepared for this brutal work. To make matters worse, he worried that his years of schooling might have made him too soft to endure the voyage. What if his studies had turned him into a pale coward—a creature too frail to do anything but turn the pages in a book? Though he hated to admit it, Pierre knew he would rather do a month of algebra lessons than repeat the day of labor that had bloodied his hands.

  The evening meal was lye-soaked corn boiled with a few ounces of salt pork. It didn’t appeal to Pierre, but the crewmen quickly lined up at the ten-gallon kettle, took their portions on tin plates, and shoveled it down. They sat anywhere—on a log or a rock or the bare ground. Some didn’t even bother with sitting.

  They used homemade wooden spoons or just their hands, tipping their plates and licking up the last few morsels. Beloît remembered his spoon but could find no plate. Not caring to borrow a tin, he ate his meal out of his sweat-stained cap. As he sucked his fingers clean, Pierre looked away to keep from vomiting.

  After dinner the men took their leisure with their pipes. Sitting before the fire and drawing out their tobacco pouches with great ceremony, they packed their clay bowls tight and then lit them with tapers pulled flaming from the coals.

  There was little talk. For the moment it seemed right to sit back and soak in the silence. Pierre watched the fire fall to embers as the full dark came on. The night air was heavy with the scents of wild berry blossoms and birch catkins. The far-off music of the rapids drifting down over the camp made it easy for Pierre to forget his blisters.

  It was La Londe who broke the spell. “Captain,” he said across the fire to McKay, “it’s amazing what a powerful thirst a day’s paddling can bring.”

  “Would you like to borrow my cup then,” McKay said, “to fetch a good draft from the river?”

  “To tell the truth, I was thinking of something a bit more lively.”

  “More lively than the Ottawa?” McKay shrugged his shoulders.

  La Londe was quiet until Bellegarde and Michel Larocque, the wiry little middleman who helped the bowman lead his songs, appeared a minute later. Each man had a keg of brandy under his arm, and Bellegarde proudly announced, “Mr. McKay has ordered the liquor ration for the trip issued.”

  The crew cheered, and La Londe said, “We drink to Commander M
cKay.” Pierre was amazed at how quickly the men crowded around Bellegarde, with their cups already in hand. The day he’d worked in the storehouse with La Petite, the big man explained that a few ounces of liquor were allotted to each man in the brigade. It was just enough for some small celebrating, but no voyageur would ever head north without his ration of brandy.

  McKay nodded politely to the men and then retired to his tent. As he walked past Pierre, the commander noticed the boy’s frown. “I’m not being unsociable, lad, I’m just not a drinking man. The company says to issue liquor, so I give them their dram of poison early in the trip, and then I’m done with it.”

  Pierre and Charbonneau were the only others to abstain. Charbonneau said he’d sworn off spirits several summers past, and everyone assumed Grandpa was too young. As Pierre took a seat on an aspen log, Beloît teased him. “Is our little lady friend afraid to taste something stronger than mother’s milk?”

  Charbonneau reached out a hand to hold Pierre back, but it was too late. He was up and digging in his pack for a cup. The first sip of brandy nearly gagged him. It burned his throat and nose and made his eyes water, but he choked down a few more swigs. If he couldn’t paddle like a voyageur, at least he could drink like one.

  The men celebrated at the same frantic pace as they paddled and ate. Clustering around the fire, they sang bawdy songs and took turns telling stories. A short while later Larocque stepped forward and announced, “It is time for the test.”

  Several men stood to take on his challenge. To Pierre’s surprise, the test was jumping over the campfire. The men leaped over the fire the short way and then the long. Others joined in, laughing and clapping their friends on the back as they braved the flames.