I was working in a small town on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, which twinkles so enchantingly in the summer, a line of silver dividing the country in two.
The Etchemin melds into the St. Lawrence just across from Ste. Foy, after the pounding Chaudiere Falls. Drive along the Etchemin valley and you'd reach a little town, one of the first Irish settlements in this part of the country. The old road heads up the hill and into the town but now the highway cuts around it in a curve, along the river valley. There is a small cluster of houses at the top of the hill. The church spire touches the sky and the library, named after Jack Kerouac, is eternally closed.
I was there in the fall. The trees were bare and the sky, grey as ever, threatened snow. I had signed up as a respite care worker in a town that claimed seven hundred.
The Irish named the town after the prophet Malachi as the Scots did Frampton and the English, Scott. It was a thoroughly English county which was named Dorchester until just recently, and the names, St. Odile de Cranbourne and Ste. Rose de Watford bear witness to the swell of anglophones who called both the Etchemin and Chaudiere river valleys home.
I first saw this little town in the depth of winter. It was a winter from Roch Carrier's book _The Hockey Sweater_, and the road, a thin ribbon, that snaked towards the little lake in the middle the woods at St. Lazare, afterwards ran frighteningly striaight towards his borderland hometown. Nothing stood above the snow. It lay deep, undulating, frozen. A hill appeared, thick with trees and the old road cutting straight through the woods. Houses lined up, small, cozy, hidden except for the thin pipes jutting into the air, smoke rising straight into the sky.
The town was now about to make its turn into winter. The autumn rains hadn't completely passed. Hallowe'en was dark, wet, and the rain felt like murder. I lived in an old white house that was once a schoolhouse I feared was inhabited by the ghosts of schoolchildren - I imagined they would be the worst - or telegraph operators, since afterwards it served as the communication centre for this small town. I worked in the red woodshed across the river. Work was good, though you couldn't hear the neighbours' horses galloping across the fields, whinnying with pure joy at being in the cold, over the scream of air vents and chisel scrapes.
The sun set as I returned from the woodshed, dropping until one day I walked out into the dark. Life was true, though I began to find it tiring.
I asked Marie where she went for vacation. Marie who was so carefree yet direct. She took her week long break not in the Gaspe or in Montreal but on the Etchemin in her one room cottage. Sometimes the river would rise and give her a scare but otherwise she loved the change right there. I couldn't imagine wanting to vacation so close to work, or even making work there a vacation, which is what Roland did, coming down from Quebec City every Thursday to have dinner with the family in /Les Hirondelles/ and then spending time working in the woodshed on the other side of the river.
I never did ask Marie to use her cottage.
I walked out to the bleachers behind the church one night and after looking at the purple blue Laurentides across the river I lay down. The sky turned black, clear, twinkling and I left St. Malachie for outer space.
