SAINT-LAMBERT,
OCTOBER 10, 6:18 P.M.

THE CITY OF TORONTO, IN Ontario, is located about five hundred kilometres southwest of Montreal. As far as a Québécois is concerned, the geographical location of the Queen City might as well be somewhere between Kirghizistan and Tajikistan. Paul Lavoie had never set foot in it. The government’s deputy premier, a Liberal of the old school, forty-nine years old, was in charge of the state of Quebec when Petit Albert was away selling off our rivers, lands, and forests to Bechtel of San Francisco, or to the money-grabbers on Wall Street. Lavoie was looking forward to going to Toronto in November. He had tickets for the Grey Cup and was taking his nephew.

He had just heard his colleague in Justice addressing John Travers’s kidnappers on television, saying the government would not negotiate with criminals. A very loud no! Perfect. He’d reserved a table at a restaurant and was waiting for his wife, who was in the bathroom getting ready to go: she was taking longer and longer making herself look less and less young. Paul Lavoie was heading into his unexpected rendezvous with history in this thirty-sixth year, wearing olive green pants with yellow stripes, varnished crocodile-leather shoes, and mismatched socks. But his shirt (sport) and jacket (checkered) didn’t look that bad. He wasn’t wearing a tie.

He went out onto the porch to get some fresh air and almost immediately was thrown an oval leather ball by his nephew. “Go, Alouettes, go!” the boy shouted. Lavoie had been looking after his nephew since the death of his brother; the boy and his mother lived in the bungalow next door. With a quick movement of his arm, he returned the ball to the youngster and jogged down the stairs and along the path. He made a short curve in his leather crocs to take the pass from his nephew, which spiralled toward him and hit him square in the chest with almost perfect precision. YES!!!! He no longer wanted the Justice portfolio, no longer cared if he became premier, he was Peter Dalla, the Alouettes’ linebacker and star receiver.

Then, while his fingers felt for the best grip along the seams of the ball and he took a few short steps backward, he became Sam Etcheverry, the former quarterback and current coach, Sam the Rifle, old eagle-eye, looking for an open receiver way up in the end zone. Watch him. Lavoie takes off his jacket like the working-class stiff he never was, he is no longer the politico who prefers to rely on contacts rather than hard work, finagling overtime, handing out surreptitious envelopes and dubious loans that paid good dividends with enough patience to let them mature; look at him — this is not the arm of the former journalist, the Maurrassien in a beret, the man of the pen — no, the man with the football rotates in on himself, turns, puts the ball in the air and on a trajectory that describes a perfect ellipse in the dark blue sky when the sun emerges to spill over Montreal from the other side of Ontario.

“Catch it, Moses!” He means Moses Denson, of course. He means Junior Ah You and the big Sonny Wade, Terry Evanshen and his twenty years of misery, twenty years of Edmonton, of Hamilton, of Winnipeg, twenty years of Russ Jackson — except this year Ottawa will not carry him off to paradise, no, because Lavoie sprints for the long bomb, his nephew pumps for the pass, his arm goes back, his grip is on the last strings of the ball, and Lavoie pivots calmly without losing the count, the missile flies through a sky of perfect, intense blue, he stretches his arms out for it, it’s October, he fans out his hands, spreads his fingers, anticipates the slap of leather on skin, but when the ball arrives it comes in like a flopping, leaden-winged duck and slips out of his grasp, lands on the sidewalk, bounces crazily into the street, and rolls away. Straight under the wheels of a Chevrolet that has come swiftly down the street and braked, tires screeching, beside the sidewalk. The doors open like the wing casings of a beetle that has fallen from the sky. And . . .

“I am SSSSSSSSam,” Lavoie mutely mouths. “The Rifle.”

Then he sees the machine guns, and behind them two men in long raincoats with strange haircuts. He automatically raises his hands. One of the men shouts at him. Something.

Lavoie hesitates, turns his head, and looks toward the house. He sees his wife standing with her handbag in the entrance. Finally ready to go.