Betty Laroche
Yesterday the supply plane lifted off Lake Abitibi in northeast Ontario and won’t be back for two weeks with our supplies of food and beer and some weed if the pilot can scare any up for us. This morning Jerry takes a leak near the edge of a massive red pine stand, and comes running and hollering back to the site where Pete and I are shaving bark off this huge log for the house we’re building right straight from nature for some rich guy down in Toronto. The floor planks are laid, but we’re still sleeping in tents until we get the log wall lined up and the roof on. Réal and François, the brothers from Quebec, are carrying over another sixteen foot pine log to put on the horses for Pete and me to strip. They don’t speak English so they don’t say much, and I like it that way.
Jerry’s running and holding something with his arms stretched way out in front of him, and we can’t make out what he’s saying. Pete looks over at me. “Dave, that guy is getting on my last nerve.” He hacks and spits. Jerry’s my friend. Pete is nothing but a weed mooching smelly, fat slouch with greasy hair and hates Jerry for no good reason. I don’t answer and keep running the blade under the bark; I love the smooth feel of it. Jerry gets over to us panting and trying to say something; he’s too worked up to speak. He has a bundle in his arms that looks like a blanket.
Leroy’s our foreman. All the commotion has stirred him out of his tent, in his underwear at noon and reeking of booze and sweat, his beer belly showing below his twisted up t-shirt. At least Pete and I and the Frenchies can drink our beer and smoke our weed and still get in a day’s work. “What’s going on out here?” Leroy says. No one answers him as usual.
Jerry finally catches his breath and says, “I found a baby.” He lays the package on the ground in front of us like some kind of offering.
“What in the blessed name of God are we supposed to do with that?” asks Leroy like it was some trinket that Jerry picked up at Zellers, not a baby in the woods of Northern Ontario. Jerry says he doesn’t know, but he sure as hell wasn’t gonna leave it in the woods for an animal to eat.
I set down the blade and open up the blanket; hoping Jerry’s just messing with us. Nope, it’s a baby. I don’t know baby ages, but this one is about the size of a large corned beef and cheese sub with arms and legs. It’s naked so we can see it’s a girl, and the cord is still hanging off her belly. The blanket smells worse than Leroy. The baby isn’t crying or moving or anything. Its skin is brown like an Indian. We’re only a few miles from the Cree Abitibi 70 reservation so I figure some little Pocahontas decided to hide the evidence from her father.
Pete starts in. “How do you hide an Indian’s welfare check? Put it under his work boots.” He laughs at his own joke.
“Knock it off, asshole. I think it’s dying,” I say.
Leroy rubs his bald head like he does when he’s trying to think of something, but doesn’t say a word. Not surprising. Jerry just paces. He almost fainted last week when Pete cut through to the steel toe of his boot with a chain saw he was too stoned and impulsive to use. I cover the baby back up so it doesn’t get cold while we sort through this mess.
“We gotta radio for the plane to come back. I’d say this counts as an emergency,” I say. Everyone agrees, and Leroy goes to make the call on the ham.
“They’ll be here in two hours. They said we gotta figure out how to take care of this thing till they get here.”
Pete throws his gloves down. “What the f—— do I know about taking care of a baby?” Jerry is starting to lose it, and Leroy’s rubbing his bald spot harder than I’ve ever seen.
“We gotta think of a way to get some food into it,” Leroy finally offers. The three of us nod our heads amazed, like he’s Einstein or something.
“Her,” says Jerry. “Her. It’s a girl. We can name her Betty.” We argue about the name for a minute, but finally let Jerry name her Betty since he found her.
“We can try and drop some milk into her mouth,” says Leroy. Good thinking we all agree, and Leroy goes and gets a box of milk from the supply crate. He tries pouring some into Betty’s mouth while Jerry holds it open. Milk comes out too fast and pours over her face and she chokes with a tiny wheeze.
“Holy shit, Leroy, you’re gonna drown her,” says Pete. He goes to get a spoon and puts a few drops on it and empties it into her mouth. Nothing. Pete picks her up and cradles her in his giant arm and rubs her belly with a hairy mitt. Betty moves just a little and we see her swallowing. We all cheer except for Pete who doesn’t want to startle her. Pete does the drops on the spoon a few more times.
All the feeding and excitement must have been too much for Betty because when we’re all starting to relax, Pete who’s still holding her shouts, “She stopped breathing!”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Jerry leaps up like there’s a fire under his ass and runs over to Pete. He takes the baby and starts breathing over her mouth and pressing her chest with his pointer finger. The other three of us look at each other wondering where Jerry learned this. He’s a damn Dr. Livingston. When Betty starts breathing again, I slap Jerry on the back and congratulate him.
“Don’t you feel safer out here now with Jerry around?” I say to the others who are, laughing, shaking hands, and slapping backs.
“We should clean her up, eh? That might make her feel better,” says Leroy dead serious. He heats some water on the camp stove, and he and Pete clean her up and wrap her in a towel. Then we sit around taking turns holding Betty like a bunch of ladies at a baby shower.
We hear the bi-plane coming in. When they land we tell the crew that her name is Betty LaRoche, same as Leroy’s last name. At night it sure feels like we deserve the Molson, and I bring out a little of my good stuff that I haven’t shared with these guys and twist one up, a fatty, and offer the first hit to Pete.
