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help.”
    To his surprise, Mme Maheu nods her approval.
    â€œAnd he’s right. I stopped working because of that. I worked in English all my life and nearly cracked afterwards. I was an accountant for a small company that made bike parts. I prepared the payslips. We were mostly French Canadians, a couple of Italians. And everything was in English! It’s not right to spend your whole life in English working for peanuts. By the end, I was even dreaming in English. I would have nightmares where I couldn’t speak at all. I just kept mumbling things half in English, half in French. It was awful; I was so mixed up. When Luc was old enough to work, I gave it all up. I prefer to live poor but speak my own language. I haven’t spoken a single word of English since, and I won’t speak another damned word until I die. I spoke enough at work.”
    Dumbfounded, Gaétan listens to her attentively. He can see that when it comes to this topic, both mother and son agree.
    â€œMaybe Paul needs somewhere to sleep,” she concludes, “and Luc gave him permission to stay at his place. We shouldn’t worry if it’s a friend.”
    As he walks away, Gaétan thinks Mme Maheu is smart to trust her son. They shouldn’t be getting involved.

    The icy mist has cleared and the sun is shining in a cloudless sky. Gaétan no longer wants to go back to bed. He decides to take a walk. He climbs the Cartier hill and heads into Parc La Fontaine. He gulps in the smell of wet fallen leaves and grass. There are patches of ice here and there. A squirrel approaches him, begging for crumbs. But his pockets are empty.
    This time of year, his father usually goes out hunting. Last year, Gaétan went with him for the first time. He even had to miss a few days of school.
    â€œHunting is the best school,” his father had said, justifying his absence.
    But this year, with all that’s going on, he didn’t even bring up the possibility. Gaétan would have gladly gone back, though. His father is a good hunter, and he almost always brings back a deer. He’s never missed a season before; this is the first year.
    He usually goes with his friends from the port. They all save their holiday weeks for the fall. The trip out to the woods with his old work buddies is always sacred.
    Last fall, Gaétan had gone up north with them. They’d driven five hours in a clunker that was so old that, from where he was sitting on the backseat, the boy could see the road whizzing by under his feet.
    After bumping over dirt roads through La Vérendrye park, they had finally reached a lake. There, a round wood cabin was waiting for them.
    â€œHere, we live like woodsmen. Like descendants of the
coureurs des bois
who discovered America and walked all across the continent. Here, we can get away from the city, our women, our bosses, and the English. I give you paradise!” his father had declared upon arrival.
    The boy would never forget those hours spent in the icy cold of the early morning, eagerly awaiting a flash of deer antlers through the black spruce. He could never forget the silence of the night buzzing with a thousand rustles and whispers that had filled his head with imaginary beasts.
    It was also during this trip that he had tasted his first Molson, had experienced his first hangover. His father had kept the rite of passage secret.
    The last night they’d made a huge campfire down by the lake to cook pork and beans. They had buried the cast iron pot in the sand, in the fire’s ashes. The next day, they were ready for breakfast. The best pork and beans he had ever eaten. Just thinking about it made his mouth water.
    And of course his father had brought back a deer, tied to the roof of the car. A trophy that, like every year, attracted the admiration of the whole street.
    That unforgettable week had been one of the rare times Gaétan had left the city.
    His forest was Parc La Fontaine more often