“Elle ne comprend pas que vous êtes écrivain,” Fontan said. He was a delicate old man who used the slang and knew the popular songs of his period of military service in the end of the 1890’s. “He writes the books himself,” he explained to Madame.
“You write the books yourself?” Madame asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Oh!” she said. “Oh! You write them yourself. Oh! Well, you get hungry if you do that too. Mangez! Je vais chercher de la bière.”
We heard her walking on the stairs to the cellar. Fontan smiled at me. He was very tolerant of people who had not his experience and worldly knowledge.
When André came home from the show we were still sitting in the kitchen and were talking about hunting.
“Labor day we all went to Clear Creek,” Madame said. “Oh, my God, you ought to have been there all right. We all went in the truck. Tout le monde est allé dans le truck. Nous sommes partis le dimanche. C’est le truck de Charley.”
“On a mangé, on a bu du vin, de la bière, et il y avait aussi un français qui a apporté de l’absinthe,” Fontan said. “Un français de la Californie!”
“My God, nous avons chanté. There’s a farmer comes to see what’s the matter, and we give him something to drink, and he stayed with us awhile. There was some Italians come too, and they want to stay with us too. We sung a song about the Italians and they don’t understand it. They didn’t know we didn’t want them, but we didn’t have nothing to do with them, and after a while they went away.”
“How many fish did you catch?”
“Très peu. We went to fish a little while, but then we came back to sing again. Nous avons chanté, vous savez.”
“In the night,” said Madame, “toutes les femmes ont dormi dans le truck. Les hommes à côté du feu. In the night I hear Fontan come to get some more wine, and I tell him, Fontan, my God, leave some for tomorrow. Tomorrow they won’ have anything to drink, and then they’ll be sorry.”
