Annabel - Kathleen Winter [27]
“Are we going to the Penashues’ tent?”
The Innu had tents in the bush all along this road. They had used the route long before anyone thought of starting a road. Treadway was not the one who had brought Wayne to the Penashues’ tent. Jacinta and Joan Martin had walked there with him to drink tea with Lucy Penashue. The women had given Wayne black tea boiled on a tin stove and bread that Lucy had kneaded and lain on the stove and torn.
“No.” The truck lurched.
Wayne wanted a glass of water but did not tell his father he was thirsty. “Did you bring any fly-dope, Dad?” He touched behind an ear and his finger was covered in blood crust.
“DEET.”
Wayne got the DEET out of the glove compartment and rubbed some behind his ears, on his neck, around his hairline, and into his hair. He hated its stink.
“Want some, Dad?”
“We’re here now.”
The truck swerved into a huge cul-de-sac, a place in the road where men with backhoes were digging dirt out of the side of a hill and heaping it along the road for the grader. This road had to be rebuilt after every winter. One day, said the politicians in Newfoundland, it would cross Labrador into Quebec with two full lanes, and even farther ahead in their crystal balls they saw it paved, so no one would have to spend the summer rebuilding it again. But now flies and heat and dust made the men sweaty and filthy. They sat high in their machines and swigged water out of plastic bottles, and they ate bologna-and-mustard sandwiches that had earth handprints on the bread. It was noon, and the men were happy to see a kid, and they joked with Treadway about putting the kid on the job. Treadway was a man who, though silent in his town, laughed and joked with the road builders and with any men in a group. He was a man who was made to be part of a team working hard with dogs on the ice or machines in the dirt. An easiness came over him. He did not have to think about what to say. It was not one man talking here, but the pack. What one man said could easily have been said by another. They threw their voices back and forth in the sun like baseball players fooling around with the ball. Summers were short in Labrador, and there were not many days a man could fool around with his friends in his shirtsleeves and feel sweat all over his body.
“Hey,” said Clement Brake, “Treadway. Is the kid ready?”
Treadway nodded and sat on a clump of lambkill and took a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum out of his pocket and offered a stick to Wayne.
“Ready for what, Dad?”
“Sit down, son. That synchronized swimming you’re so fond of? Wait till you see this.”
Wayne sat beside his dad. The men got their backhoes in gear. They lurched out of their hollows and moved to the centre of the packed dirt.
“Hey,” shouted Clement Brake to Otis Watts, “Mister Music, please!”
“Right on,” yelled Otis, and he put Creedence Clearwater Revival on bust up in the cab. The backhoes lined up.
“What are they doing, Dad?”
Treadway chewed his gum. “Pay attention, son.” The backhoes lifted their arms. They tilted their shovels to the right, then to the left. They lowered their arms and raised them again. Wayne realized this was supposed to be in time to the music. The music was ahead of them, but that did not stop them. Half a beat behind the music the backhoes turned full circle, backed up, and lifted their arms up and down maniacally. Treadway chewed with his mouth open and stared appreciatively at the men. Wayne saw that he was half smiling in a way he had never seen his dad smile. His dad looked at him. Wayne realized he was supposed to smile back and he tried, but it was torture. He had grit in his eyes and he hated the backhoes. The song ended seconds before the machines stopped. Wayne saw the men’s teeth in their brown faces through the glass of each cab. They were so proud they couldn’t speak. Treadway waved at Otis, who had taken the lead. It was a high-five kind of wave, the kind Wayne never knew was coming.
“Well, son? Did you like it?”
Wayne knew he had to say “yeah” but he could not say it. He watched the crinkles