The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories by Roch Carrier

Author:Roch Carrier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC029000
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc.
Published: 1979-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

A Great Hunter

WHEN HUNTERS told how they had taken the animal by surprise or how its own foolishness had led it to them, you had only to see the fire in their mouths or eyes to know that killing brought them a great deal of joy.

I liked Louis Grands-pieds’ stories. He would never tell any more. That day, we were taking him to the graveyard. My friend Lapin, carrying the censer, and I the holy water, very dignified in our black soutanes and starched lace surplices, were leading the cortège to the site the sacristan had shown us.

For years Louis Grands-pieds had been suffering from an incurable disease. He rarely got up before noon. All day he would drag behind him the weight of his bed. No one dared reproach him for his laziness; a man’s entitled to be sad and stooped and tired.

But when the hunting season came! Then Louis would get up long before the sun, he would dress in wool and jump in his car which had wings as it sped through the sleeping villages along a gravel road all curves and humps and bumps. In the dark, when the yellowed grass began to be visible – very pale because of fog and the grey light – Louis got out of his car, walked around to the other side and opened the door as though for a lady. He took out his rifle.

Softly, without singing, without catching his clothes on the branches, he walked into the forest filled with night. The path was so familiar he could have walked its whole length with his eyes closed. Near the end the ground was softer. Through his rubber boots he could feel moss; the lake was near. He recognized the smell of water mingled with that of the night. Every autumn morning for several years Louis Grands-pieds came that way. Before he spied the lake he took a sip of brandy. As he was walking beneath the branches, day had approached in the sky. The lake exhaled white steam like that which came from Louis’ mouth. This was the lake where animals came to drink. He had seen beaver swim from one stump to another. Sometimes he had seen hoofprints, moose or deer. Every morning, Louis Grands-pieds was sorry he had come so late. ‘The moose came to drink in the middle of the night’, he thought, looking for a stump that had taken on the shape of a chair, with a back, when the tree was felled. It was Louis’ custom to sit there and wait for the game that would certainly come to drink one day. No one else knew this refuge.

He drank a little brandy. He had discovered this place when he was a child and he always came back to it. The sun was climbing higher in the sky, he could see it through the leaves whose bright colours were awakening. There was a splash in the water. A frog. There were thousands in the lake.

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