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
