they don’t even remember.” She spoke French, but it was only French occasionally, and there were many English words and some English constructions.
“Where’s Fontan?”
“Il fait de la vendange. Oh, my God, il est crazy pour le vin.”
“But you like the beer?”
“Oui, j’aime la bière, mais Fontan, il est crazy pour le vin.”
She was a plump old woman with a lovely ruddy complexion and white hair. She was very clean and the house was very clean and neat. She came from Lens.
“Where did you eat?”
“At the hotel.”
“Mangez ici. Il ne faut pas manger à l’hôtel ou au restaurant. Mangez ici!”
“I don’t want to make you trouble. And besides they eat all right at the hotel.”
“I never eat at the hotel. Maybe they eat all right there. Only once in my life I ate at a restaurant in America. You know what they gave me? They gave me pork that was raw!”
“Really?”
“I don’t lie to you. It was pork that wasn’t cooked! Et mon fils il est marié avec une américaine, et tout le temps il a mangé les beans en can.”
“How long has he been married?”
“Oh, my God, I don’t know. His wife weighs two hundred twenty-five pounds. She don’t work. She don’t cook. She gives him beans en can.”
“What does she do?”
“All the time she reads. Rien que des books. Tout le temps elle stay in the bed and read books. Already she can’t have another baby. She’s too fat. There ain’t any room.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“She reads books all the time. He’s a good boy. He works hard. He worked in the mines; now he works on a ranch. He never worked on a ranch before, and the man that owns the ranch said to Fontan that he never saw anybody work better
