“No,” said Madame. “On ne mange pas bien.” She shook her head. “Et aussi, il y a trop de Polack. Quand j’étais petite ma mère m’a dit, ‘vous mangez comme les Polacks.’ Je n’ai jamais compris ce que c’est qu’un Polack. Mais maintenant en Amérique je comprends. Il y a trop de Polack. Et, my God, ils sont sales, les Polacks.”
“It is fine for hunting and fishing,” I said.
“Oui. Ça, c’est le meilleur. La chasse et la pêche,” Fontan said. “Qu’est-ce que vous avez comme fusil?”
“A twelve-gauge pump.”
“Il est bon, le pump,” Fontan nodded his head.
“Je veux aller à la chasse moi-même,” André said in his high, little boy’s voice.
“Tu ne peux pas,” Fontan said. He turned to me.
“Ils sont des sauvages, les boys, vous savez. Ils sont des sauvages. Ils veulent shooter les uns les autres.”
“Je veux aller tout seul,” André said, very shrill and excited.
“You can’t go,” Madame Fontan said. “You are too young.”
“Je veux aller tout seul,” André said shrilly. “Je veux shooter les rats d’eau.”
“What are rats d’eau?” I asked.
“You don’t know them? Sure you know them. What they call the muskrats.”
André had brought the twenty-two-calibre rifle out from the cupboard and was holding it in his hands under the light.
“Ils sont des sauvages,” Fontan explained. “Ils veulent shooter les uns les autres.”
“Je veux aller tout seul,” André shrilled. He looked desperately along the barrel of the gun. “Je veux shooter les rats d’eau. Je connais beaucoup de rats d’eau.”
“Give me the gun,” Fontan said. He explained again to me. “They’re savages. They would shoot one another.”
André held tight on to the gun.
“On peut looker. On ne fait pas de mal. On peut looker.”
“Il est crazy pour le shooting,” Madame Fontan said. “Mais il est trop jeune.”
André put the twenty-two-calibre rifle back in the cupboard.
“When I’m bigger I’ll shoot the muskrats and the jack-rabbits too,” he said in English. “One time I went out with papa and he shot a jack-rabbit just a little bit and I shot it and hit it.”
“C’est vrai,” Fontan nodded. “Il a tué un jack.”
“But he hit it first,” André said. “I want to go all by myself and shoot all by myself. Next year I can do it.” He went over in a corner and sat down to read a book. I had picked it up when we came into the kitchen to sit after supper. It was a library book—Frank on a Gunboat.
“Il aime les books,” Madame Fontan said. “But it’s better than to run around at night with the other boys and steal things.”
“Books are all right,” Fontan said. “Monsieur il fait les books.”
“Yes, that’s so, all right. But too many books are bad,” Madame Fontan said. “Ici, c’est une maladie, les books. C’est comme les churches. Ici il y a trop de churches. En France il y a seulement les catholiques et les protestants—et très peu de protestants. Mais ici rien que de churches. Quand j’étais venu ici je disais, oh, my God, what are all the churches?”
“C’est vrai,” Fontan said. “Il y a trop de churches.”
“The other day,” Madame Fontan said, “there was a little French girl here with her mother, the cousin of Fontan, and she said to me, ‘En Amérique il ne faut pas être catholique. It’s not good to be catholique. The Americans don’t like you to be catholique. It’s like the dry law.’ I said to her, ‘What you going to be? Heh? It’s better to be catholique if you’re catholique.’ But she said, ‘No, it isn’t any good to be catholique in America.’ But I think it’s better to be catholique if you are. Ce n’est pas bon de changer sa religion. My God, no.”
“You go to the mass here?”
“No. I don’t go in America, only sometimes in a long while. Mais je reste catholique. It’s no good to change the religion.”
“On dit que Schmidt est catholique,” Fontan said.
“On dit, mais on ne sait jamais,” Madame Fontan said. “I don’t think Schmidt is catholique. There’s not many catholique in America.”
“We are catholique,” I said.
“Sure, but you live in France,” Madame Fontan said. “Je ne crois pas que Schmidt est catholique. Did he ever live in France?”
“Les Polacks sont catholiques,” Fontan said.
“That’s true,” Madame Fontan said. “They go to church, then they fight with knives all the way home and kill each other all day Sunday. But they’re not real catholiques. They’re Polack catholiques.”
“All catholiques are the same,” Fontan said. “One catholique is like another.”
“I don’t believe Schmidt is catholique,” Madame Fontan said. “That’s awful funny if he’s catholique. Moi, je ne crois pas.”
“Il est catholique,” I said.
“Schmidt is catholique,” Madame Fontan mused. “I wouldn’t have believed it. My God, il est catholique.”
“Marie va chercher de la bière,” Fontan said. “Monsieur a soif—moi aussi.”
“Yes, all right,” Madame Fontan said from the next room. She went downstairs and we heard the stairs creaking. André sat reading in the corner. Fontan and I sat at the table, and he poured the beer from the last bottle into our two glasses, leaving a little in the bottom.
“C’est un bon pays pour la chasse,” Fontan said. “J’aime beaucoup shooter les canards.”
“Mais il y a très bonne chasse aussi en France,” I said.
“C’est vrai,” Fontan said. “Nous avons beaucoup de gibier là-bas.”
Madame Fontan came up the stairs with the beer bottles in her hands. “Il est catholique,” she said. “My God, Schmidt est catholique.”
“You think he’ll be the President?” Fontan asked.
“No,” I said.
The next afternoon I drove out to Fontan’s, through the shade of the town, then along the dusty road, turning up the side road and leaving the car beside the fence. It was another hot day. Madame Fontan came to the back door. She looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, clean and rosy-faced and white-haired, and waddling when she walked.
“My God, hello,” she said. “It’s hot, my God.” She went back into the house to get some beer. I sat on the back porch and looked through the screen and the leaves of the tree at the heat and, away off, the mountains. There were furrowed brown mountains, and above them three peaks and a glacier with snow that you could see through the trees. The snow looked very white and pure and unreal. Madame Fontan came out and put down the bottles on the table.
“What you see out there?”
“The snow.”
“C’est joli, la neige.”
“Have a glass, too.”
“All right.”
She sat down on a chair beside me. “Schmidt,” she said. “If he’s the President, you think we get the wine and beer all right?”
“Sure,” I said. “Trust Schmidt.”
“Already we paid seven hundred fifty-five dollars in fines when they arrested Fontan. Twice the police arrested us and once the governments. All the money we made all the time Fontan worked in the mines and I did washing. We paid it all. They put Fontan in jail. Il n’a jamais fait de mal à personne.”
“He’s a good man,” I said. “It’s a crime.”
“We don’t charge too much money. The wine one dollar a litre. The beer ten cents a bottle. We never sell the beer before it’s good. Lots of places they sell the beer right away when they make it, and then it gives everybody a headache. What’s the matter with that? They put Fontan in jail and they take seven hundred fifty-five dollars.”
“It’s wicked,” I said. “Where is Fontan?”
“He stays with the wine. He has to watch it now to catch it just right,” she smiled. She did not think about the money any more. “Vous savez, il est crazy pour le vin. Last night he brought a little bit home with him, what you drank, and a little bit of the new. The last new. It ain’t ready yet, but he drank a little bit, and this morning he put a little bit in his coffee. Dans son café, vous savez! Il est crazy pour le vin! Il est comme ça. Son pays est comme ça. Where I live in the north they don’t drink any wine. Everybody drinks beer. By where we lived there was a big brewery right near us. When I was a little girl I didn’t like the smell of the hops in the carts.
Nor in the fields. Je n’aime pas les houblons. No, my God, not a bit. The man that owns the brewery said to me and my sister to go to the brewery and drink the beer, and then we’d like the hops. That’s true. Then we liked them all right. He had them give us the beer. We liked them all right then. But Fontan, il est crazy pour le vin. One time he killed a jack-rabbit and he wanted me to cook it with a sauce with wine, make a black sauce with wine and butter and mushrooms and onion and everything in it, for the jack. My God, I make the sauce all right, and he eat it all and said, ‘La sauce est meilleure que le jack.’ Dans son pays c’est comme ça. Il y a beaucoup de gibier et de vin. Moi, j’aime les pommes de terre, le saucisson, et la bière. C’est bon, la bière. C’est très bon pour la santé.”
“It’s good,” I said. “It and wine too.”
“You’re like Fontan. But there was a thing here that I never saw. I don’t think you’ve ever seen it either. There were Americans came here and they put whiskey in the beer.”
“No,” I said.
“Oui. My God, yes, that’s true. Et aussi une femme qui a vomis
