The Plains of Abraham

Chapter 1

As I write this, Father Malcolm is building a fire.

We found a sheltered spot on the riverbank and I shot a rabbit for dinner. The rabbits in these parts have likely never seen a man before. This one hesitated long enough to give me the once-over, and that was his undoing.

Father Malcolm laughed when he saw how many notebooks I'd wedged into the canoe. Hopefully we stole enough ink for my quill pen. Verba volant, scripta manent. I'd drawn myself up to convince the good father of the need for a written record. He's quick to debate and will argue the shape of a cloud if he imagines a more exotic animal drifting across the sky. But he closed his eyes and nodded; something would survive the voyage, even if neither of us did.

We've spent these past seven days out of Kebek paddling upstream on the Laurent River, and my back hurts so much I'm considering asking Father Malcolm if we can stop for a few days to rest. Berries are still available and rabbits are stupid. But he gazes ever westward, and I know he's eager to put distance between us and any martinets that might be on our trail. Leaves are already changing color, swapping their chlorophyll for glorious shades of red that will soon stray to brown. He's afraid we got off to a late start. In this respect we agree. The problem is, we don't know how much farther we have to go. If the legendary lands we seek appear around the next bend we can pat ourselves on the back for having executed a timely get-away. If not, nor around the bends that follow, winter awaits us. And winter is never kind to pilgrims traveling by canoe.

At the moment Malcolm is sitting across from me. The fire is burning, the rabbit is skewered and sizzling just above reach of the flames. Every minute or so Malcolm rotates the skewer and fat dribbles into the fire where it hisses and sputters.

Father Malcolm Marchand is a gaunt man with unkempt black hair that falls over his eyes. He doesn't shave as often as the bishop would like. His gait is lanky, as though he needs all his bones and muscles to propel himself. Sometimes the children laugh as he lopes down the street. Sometimes I laugh too.

He's more afraid of martinets than he is of changing seasons. We're not yet far from the coast, he argues, and if we don't keep moving they'll catch us. Ahead are possibilities, sheathed in myth. Behind is a prison sentence, or worse, for each of us.

All because of a broken radio.

Malcolm taught scripture to the young ones. I, having reached the age of majority, had elected to remain at the school, work as his assistant, and study to become a priest. The priests were the teachers, and the teachers were the bond keeping civilization together.

Proud of this presumably original notion, I shared it with Father Malcolm back when I could still slip into one of the scratched and worn school desks, when I was still a fidgeting runt who habitually avoided eye contact. After pausing to think about it he smiled and said, "So teachers are grout? Is that what you're saying, René Jordan?" I blushed. From then on, when no one else was around, he called me by my new nickname, Grout.

A full year passed, during which I worked as his assistant, before he confided in me, before he shared his great secret: he was hoarding books in the school basement.

At first I was shocked and disoriented. Here was a good and devout Levitican who stood in the pulpit on Sundays, preached the Gospel, and delivered sermons in defense of the laws against unnecessary knowledge and technology. He knew those laws well: technology was dangerous; technology had destroyed the world. The only literature allowed in Kebek schools following the poisoned rains was the Bible, a few related monographs, and some elementary textbooks to teach spelling, arithmetic, and the like. Any new publication required approval of the Council of Bishops, a toilsome procedure. Sometimes books from olden times turned up in attic trunks or on the shelves of dilapidated buildings. If you stumbled across one you were required to surrender it—without opening the cover. Reading it was a sin.