“There is a word for such people when they do like that, in French,” Fontan said. He stood looking very old and tired from the heat.
“What?”
“Cochon,” he said delicately, hesitating to use such a strong word. “They were like the cochon. C’est un mot très fort,” he apologized, “mais vomir sur la table—” he shook his head sadly.
“Cochons,” I said. “That’s what they are—cochons. Salauds.”
The grossness of the words was distasteful to Fontan. He was glad to speak of something else.
“Il y a des gens très gentils, très sensibles, qui viennent aussi,” he said. “There are officers from the fort. Very nice men. Good fellas. Everybody that was ever in France they want to come and drink wine. They like wine all right.”
“There was one man,” Madame Fontan said, “and his wife never lets him get out. So he tells her he’s tired, and goes to bed, and when she goes to the show he comes straight down here, sometimes in his pyjamas just with a coat over them. ‘Maria, some beer,’ he says, ‘for God’s sake.’ He sits in his pyjamas and drinks the beer, and then he goes up to the fort and gets back in bed before his wife comes home from the show.”
“C’est un original,” Fontan said, “mais vraiment gentil. He’s a nice fella.”
“My God, yes, nice fella all right,” Madame Fontan said. “He’s always in bed when his wife gets back from the show.”
“I have to go away tomorrow,” I said. “To the Crow Reservation. We go there for the opening of the prairie-chicken season.”
“Yes? You come back here before you go away. You come back here all right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then the wine will be done,” Fontan said. “We’ll drink a bottle together.”
“Three bottles,” Madame Fontan said.
“I’ll be back,” I said.
