The Camp-stove Prayer

by Roch Carrier

Hello, God. I came to apologize about the camp-stove. Our father wasn’t very happy. He kept saying over and over:

“What are we going to do with him?”

“Him” was me. Our father got very upset. He was very mad. When our father gets mad his cheeks turn red. He started running after me. He was running because I was running away. And I was running away because he wanted to spank my backside. I could hear him breathing behind me.

I’d rather have my backside punished by a long, long spanking than be tossed into the fires of Hell. Hell isn’t a very great invention, if you ask me. The creator of apple trees and strawberries and birds and fish shouldn’t have created Hell. . .

Our father was furious; I really think he would have liked to create Hell just to throw me inside. Our father’s always red when he gets mad. Sud­denly I saw him turn white: as white as a ghost on the night of November first. His mouth was open as wide as if he’d shouted, but he didn’t have any voice. At the same time, his two hands were clutching his belt as if his belly was too heavy to carry. He stopped. Now I didn’t have to run away.

Our mother arrived and accused me:

“You’re trying to kill your father!”

I didn’t want to kill our father. I told my mother. Instead of being happy, she turned as pale and furious as my father. She wanted to collapse into the rocking chair, but our father was already there. So she said to me:

“And you want to kill your mother too. ...“

I don’t want to kill our mother, either. You know that, deep in my heart, I want our mother and our father to live for a long time. I want to have children, later on. My children will have children. Their children will have children. I’d like our mother and our father to live long enough to rock them all. They’ll certainly die before that.

Death isn’t Your best invention, either. Nobody’s happy to die. Even people who are very old when they die don’t like it.  Even people who take their own lives with a rope around their necks; dying makes them as unhappy as living did. God, You invented life I’m sure You could disinvent death. And then our parents would stop saying:

“Do you want to kill us?”

I’m sure they know that I don’t want them to die. Why do they say I do? They must mean something else, and they don’t know how to say it.  Couldn’t You help them a little to learn how to talk to me?

After they said: “Do you want to kill us?” I tool a look at my face in the mirror when I was washing my hands. I thought I looked like the picture of the murderer in the newspaper. God, I don’t want to kill them.

I promise You: the next time my father chases me when I’ve done something I shouldn’t, I’m going let him catch me and I’ll let him dislocate my behind. I’d rather have a sore bum than see my father suffocate.

God who seest (that’s in my grammar book) everything that happens on Earth, You know my father’s camp-stove. He couldn’t get through a winter without his camp-stove. I’ve never seen my father so happy as when his camp-stove fills the little shed on the back of his sleigh with its fragrant heat.

When he goes to the villages on the other side the mountain, to Saint-Magloire-de-Bellechasse everybody knows our father. And everybody knows his yellow sleigh-shed with his name painted on the sides in big red and black letters. He carts around in it everything he’s going to sell on the farms: his flasks of medicines for the cows, his bags of candies for the calves, his boxes of vitamins for the pigs.  Our father’s proud of his sleigh-shed. His chair has sheepskin upholstery, but he doesn’t sit in it. He stays standing up so he can see the people watching him go by. He greets everybody by taking off his otter-skin cap. His horse looks even prouder than he does. Our father dresses him up with a fire harness decorated with a whole hardware store-full of shiny ornaments and a whole jewellery shop sleigh-bells. The horse seems to know he’s got the nicest harness in the Appalachians. He does his work with a smile. His sleigh-shed is the only one of its kind in the whole region. He’s a famous horse; that must make him happy. And behind him he can smell the piled-up bags of oats. His master’s never given him the whip. Our father makes his whip whistle in the air so he’ll look like a master, but You know, God, that the whip has never touched the horse’s rump. The animal’s happy: he’s never been humiliated like other horses in the region.

Our father’s famous because of the smoke that comes out of the sleigh-shed. It’s a fine thing to see: a black horse, with bells, pulling through the spar­kling white snow a yellow sleigh-shed with our father standing up and wearing his otter-skin cap. Overhead there’s a little cloud of white smoke —that’s the sign the sleigh-shed leaves in the sky. When I’m at school, I sometimes see our father go by in his sleigh-shed, and then I feel proud. It isn’t a sin to feel proud of your father, is it God?

There wouldn’t be any smoke if there wasn’t a fire in the sleigh-shed. Our father doesn’t like to freeze his nose. Outside, snow and icicles hang from the roofs, and trees crack in the cold. Inside the sleigh-shed, it’s warm. Our father likes the warmth of a good wood fire. He had a stove made and he feeds it maple wood. The stove turns ret with the heat; its belly is swollen with fire. There’s sweat underneath our father’s cap. Outside, there’s ice; at the windows there’s frost. Inside, it’s like the sun at the Equator. The camp-stove gets rid of in smoke through the little chimney that sticks out of the roof.

I’m sure You don’t need a camp-stove up in Heaven. If You know what’s in the hearts of men, You must know that a camp-stove isn’t like a cooking stove in the kitchen. It’s made out of an empty barrel that sits on four iron feet. Our father’s camp-stove is little, but it gives off so much heat! Sometimes our father invites me inside with him, but I’d rather walk behind the sleigh-shed. It’s not that I don’t love our father, God, but I hate being hot. With his sheep-fur boots, his sheepskin vest, his coonskin coat, his otter-skin cap, his wool-lined leather mitts and the warmth of his camp-stove, our father must feel like a tomcat purring in the July sun.

Not everybody’s warm like that in winter. Some poor people haven’t got a fur coat or a sheepskin vest. Some houses are very cold. The other day, I was listening to the men at the general store. They were talking about a house nearby where poor people live; it’s so badly built that the snow comes in through the planks in the wall when there’s a storm. There’s ice on the walls inside. One day the children couldn’t go to school because they couldn’t get their clothes down off the nails in the wall; they were frozen in the ice. That house is crammed full of children. And grandparents, too, who are cold. It seems that being poor makes you live to a ripe old age. All those poor people are cold inside that cold house. The children are so cold their faces are blue. The old people will cough to death because they have colds that don’t get better. There are twenty-seven in the Laframboise family. A man in the general store said that when the wind blows, the lamp in their house goes out. They’re too poor to dress all the children, so some of them go around naked when the others are dressed. It’s the same thing for food. One day one of them eats, and the next day he doesn’t because it’s someone else’s turn.

The Laframboise children go to our school. I’m not happy that they’re cold. I’ve never been cold. Our house is always as warm as toast. Our father doesn’t like to be cold. He’s always afraid we’ll be cold. I’d like to help the Laframboise family not be so cold. What can a child do? I have the impression, God, that You wanted children to be useless. We’re always too young.

That’s what I was thinking about when I looked towards the hill across from the church and saw our father’s yellow sleigh-shed coming home, with the black horse and the white smoke. When I saw that, I decided that I could help the Laframboise family not to be so cold. I just had to wait for a while.

Our father led the horse into the stable. Then went to tell the men in the general store about I trip. I watched the white smoke at the chimney his sleigh-shed. It took a long time, but suddenly there wasn’t any more. The fire was out. So then I cooled down the camp-stove with snow.  I wrenched it away from its chimney. I unscrewed its feet from the floor and I loaded it on my sleigh.  It just looked like an empty barrel now.

I walked more than two miles. I went and knocked at the door of the Laframboise house and I said:

“I’m giving you our father’s camp-stove; I don’t know any camp-stove that makes so much heat.”

The Laframboises didn’t look as glad as I’d expected, but I don’t think poor people need to be glad when you give them something. I was glad, though.

Can You explain it to me, God? Why did my father get mad? With his otter-skin cap, his coon­skin coat, his lined boots and his sheepskin vest, he doesn’t need a camp-stove, too. The Laframboise family lives in a house where the wind comes in as if the door and the windows were open.

God, why was it a sin for me to try and make the Laframboise family not be so cold?

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Prayers of a Very Wise Child by Roch Carrier
Translated by Sheila Fischman Viking: Published by the Penguin Group Copyright © Les editions internationales Alain Stanke, 1988.  English translation copyright © Sheila Fischman, 1991