"My God, nous avons chante. 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?"
"Tres peu. We went to fish a little while, but then we came back to sing again. Nous avons chante, vous savez."
"In the night," said Madame, "toutes les femmes ont dormi dans le truck. Les hommes a cote 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."
"Mais nous avons tout bu," Fontan said. "Et le lendemain il ne reste rien."
"What did you do?"
"Nous avons peche serieusement."
"Good trout, all right, too. My God, yes. All the same; half-pound one ounce."
"How big?"
"Half-pound one ounce. Just right to eat. All the same size; half-pound one ounce."
"How do you like America?" Fontan asked me.
"It's my country, you see. So I like it, because it's my country. Mais on ne mange pas tres bien. D'antan, oui. Mais maintenant, no."
"No," said Madame. "On ne mange pas bien." She shook her head. "Et aussi, il y a trop de Polack. Quand jetais petite ma mere m'a dit, 'vous mangez comme les Polacks.' Je n'ai jamais compris ce que c'est qu'un Polack. Mais maintenant en Amerique 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. ca, c'est le meilleur. La chasse et la peche," Fontan said. "Qu'estce que vous avez comme fusil?"
"A twelve-gauge pump."
"Il est bon, le pump," Fontan nodded his head.
"Je veux aller a la chasse moi-meme," Andre 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," Andre said, very shrill and excited.
"You can't go," Madame Fontan said. "You are too young."
"Je veux aller tout seul," Andre 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."
Andre 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," Andre 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."
Andre 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."
Andre 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 tue un jack."
"But he hit it first," Andre 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 tres peu de protestants. Mais ici rien que de churches. Quand j'etais 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 Amerique il ne faut pas etre 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 biere," 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. Andre 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 tres bonne chasse aussi en France," I said.
"C'est vrai," Fontan said. "Nous avons beaucoup de gibier la-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 jolie, 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 government. 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 a 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 cafe, vous savez! Il est crazy pour le vin! Il est comme ca. Son pays est comme ca. 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 ca. Il y a beaucoup de gibier et de vin. Moi, j'aime les pommes de terre, le saucisson, et la biere. C'est bon, la biere. C'est tres bon pour la sante."
"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 sur la table!"
"Comment?"
"C'est vrai. Elle a vomis sur la table. Et apres elle a vomis dans ses shoes. And afterward they come back and say they want to come again and have another party the next Saturday, and I say no, my God, no! When they came I locked the door."
"They're bad when they're drunk."
"In the winter-time when the boys go to the dance they come in the cars and wait outside and say to Fontan, 'Hey, Sam, sell us a bottle wine,' or they buy the beer, and then they take the moonshine out of their pockets in a bottle and pour it in the beer and drink it. My God, that's the first time I ever saw that in my life. They put whiskey in the beer. My God, I don't understand that!"
"They want to get sick, so they'll know they're drunk."
"One time a fellow comes here came to me and said he wanted me to cook them a big supper and they drink one two bottles of wine, and their girls come too, and then they go to the dance. All right, I said. So I made a big supper, and when they come already they drank a lot. Then they put whiskey in the wine. My God, yes. I said to Fontan, 'On va etre malade!' 'Oui,' il dit. Then these girls were sick, nice girls too, all-right girls. They were sick right at the table. Fontan tried to take them by the arm and show them where they could be sick all right in the cabinet, but the fellows said no, they were all right right there at the table."
Fontan had come in. "When they come again I locked the door. 'No,' I said. 'Not for hundred fifty dollars.' My God, no."
"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 tres 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 tres gentils, tres 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.