Poached Egg on Toast

by Frances Itani

  Everything around seems to be in a state of being dismissed or constantly damned. Yet nothing goes away—only, finally, and much later, Mr. Smith and his family.

  Oh, how the children are bored this summer. They have cut bows and arrows from green saplings; they have fashioned whistles from reeds; they have played deadman in the cove. They have scratched hopscotch into the dirt and thrown cut glass onto the squares. What is there left to do? Visit Mon Oncle Piché on the veranda of his black wooden house!

  Mon Oncle is everyone’s uncle. He tilts in his wide rocker, all day, in shelter of the open veranda. He is too heavy to get up to walk around; it is enough effort to get himself into his chair each morning. His head is almost as big as his belly with its layers and layers of hard fat. His hair is cropped short to his scalp, peppered with grey. His black pants, held by suspenders, fit straight up from thigh to chin. All day he sits on the veranda and eats bread and jam.

  But Mon Oncle—how he loves the children!

  “Viens citte, mon p’tit chou. Come and talk to Mon Oncle.”

  The children tell him stories. He teases them; he knows more about them than their parents do. The children know that Mon Oncle can keep a secret. They make wishes and pop brown silky weeds against the back of his spotted hands. He tells them which leaves to smoke and where to find tender shoots of grass to suck. He knows which blossoms attract the whirr of hummingbirds’ wings. He knows about crickets that sing and red-winged blackbirds in the swamp. He imitates the early morning killdee-killdeer until the call echoes back from the river.

  The children wander off. Mon Oncle Piché sits alone and thinks of all the things he used to know. Then he turns to the propped-up tray beside his chair, and goes back to eating bread and jam.

  In the warmth of evening, old Hervé, the policeman, sets out on his bike just as the nine o’clock siren wails to its highest pitch and drones to summer silence again.

  “Off the streets. Off! Off the streets.” He tries to wave his fist at the children but it is difficult to keep his balance on the dirt roads with only a single grip on the handlebar.

  “Tabernac,” he mutters. The children taunt, one foot in their parents’ yards, the other foot on the street. The leg of Hervé’s trousers gets caught in the bicycle chain and he falls to one side, trying to extricate himself and look fierce at the same time. The silver badge is dull on his plaid shirt. The children roll on the ground, puffing out their sides in fake laughter. The fender is bent and rickety as Hervé wobbles back towards rue Principale, the only street in the village that is paved.

  But on Wednesdays, when the garbage truck comes round, the children do not laugh. Hervé’s two big sons rattle the pails; they toss them back and forth with importance, with ease. They spit over the wheeze of truck and the stench of refuse.

  “Maudit, don’t get caught after the siren tonight. Our fadder, he will get you tonight.”

  Today, there will be a confession. In Quincy and Marlene’s backyard the children congregate beneath the overturned row-boat that rests on two shaky sawhorses.

  No Protestant rite can match this. Marlene preens; she and Quincy will receive instruction from Pierrette and Hercules. Hercules will be priest.

  The children kneel in the grass beneath the boat. Hercules’ head is hidden in the shadows somewhere above one of the wooden seats. His black eyes scrutinize the souls of these young sinners.

  “Do you have anything to confess?” Sternly.

  “I laughed at Hervé when he fell off his bike.”

  “I swore at Pitou … and broke a plate.”

  “I wore shorts on Main Street. Against the priest’s will.”

  “More? Robbery? Violence?”

  “I had a bad thought in my heart,” says Pierrette. Marlene is prepared for this. You have to confess all deeds committed and uncommitted. Those in your heart count for as much as the act.

  “Any DIRTY THOUGHTS?” Hercules asks this gleefully.

  They shriek with laughter as he doles out the penance.

  “Fifteen Hail Marys before supper.” He makes the sign of the cross.

  But the children are gone. Like the breeze they have scattered.

  Jacques is sent to Chez Henri to buy peameal bacon. It is Thursday.

  “We’ll have bacon and eggs tonight,” says Madame Lalonde. “Back to sardines tomorrow.”

  Jacques skulks to the store. He tosses tiny pebbles into the air, kicks a smooth round rock from square to square in the sidewalk. It must not touch a crack.

  Jacques does not want to tell Henri to put anything on the bill—that pale lined pad, each page glaring accusation as Henri’s wife presses upon the carbon with her soft pencil. At the end of the day, the balance will be entered in the black ledger.

  “Don’t forget to tell your father to make a payment,” she says.

  Her plump breasts try to push sideways out of her flimsy cotton dress. Madame Henri goes to the hairdresser every week. Her hair is oiled and perfect, thousands of curls erupting from her plump head. Her skin, too, is oiled. Makeup the colour of brown eggshells lies in the creases of her neck.

  When Jacques tells his father about the bill, Monsieur Lalonde growls, “What do those fatheads need my money for? They’re robbing us blind, cal-ice.”

  Monsieur does not have to worry about the thick soft pages of the bill; it is not he, after all, who must face Madame Henri each day across the counter. No, Monsieur can afford to snub his nose at the store as he drives past each morning in his Vachon truck.

  Summer’s end. All week the river has been a mass of bobbing timber as the logs tumble and heave towards the Eddy mills. Half a mile downriver, some of the logs pile in a defiant jam between the remnants of an old stone wall and a mossy island that is inaccessible because of rapids. Later, the men will work the rafts to free the main jams. They won’t bother with the logs that drift to shore. In autumn, when the water rises, the strays will float out again.

  The setting sun bursts golden beyond the trees. Water flings itself towards the roar of rapids. The sounds of night drift through the air.

  AUTOMNE

  All fall the villagers have been fitting stovepipes, painting them with aluminum paint, banging out the soot, putting up the oil stoves, shaking down the ashes in the coal stoves. Scuttles stand ready. The coalman backs his truck into the yards, lowers his shute and sets the coal roaring into bins that have been sectioned off in corners of toolsheds and barns.

  The last logs along shore have been pushed out by the children, or have floated away as the water has risen. Mon Oncle Piché sits on his veranda eating bread and jam, waiting for the children to come and sit beside him. He is sad because soon he will have to move his rocking chair back to the kitchen by the stove, where he will sit all winter, eating, filling out the mass of his shapeless body.

  School has started. The Protestants and Catholics are at it again. The boys can’t wait to begin their snowball fights, and search the sky for signs of the first white flakes. For now, peashooters will do.

  Mothers pull breeches and duffel coats from the attics. They trace around children’s feet and cut cardboard soles to stuff into last year’s galoshes, trying to make them last one more winter. They sew patchy fur collars onto coats, hiding claws, hoping to keep out the wind.

  HIVER

  A bluish-white covering muffles the village. Rue Principale quickly freezes and the children skate on the road at dusk. The rink boards are in place in the field and the barnboard shack with its potbelly heat is made ready. Music is pumped through a loudspeaker, which is attached to a pole at one end of the rink.

  The older girls skate round and round, flicking long dark hair. They sing about jealousy, flashing their eyes. Young men skate, arms around the girls’ waists. Legs are sleek and synchronized to the blaring music.

  The orange school bus streaks into the village to collect the Protestants. Quincy and Marlene and a handful of English are driven to the one-room school miles away in the country. The Catholic
s have their own school in the village—a two-storey grey stone with black fire escape clinging to the side. During the school term, the orange bus reminds the children that there are differences to be considered. The older boys from both schools, the Grade Sevens, are appallingly monstrous and rowdy. In spring and fall they throw rocks; in winter they ambush with snowballs. The French, on their way to school, have to pass the English huddled at the bus stop. Across the road there is a pond in a small open field, partly fenced. The fence can easily be pushed down into the snow.

  One day the boys are having their usual morning exchanges:

  “I hope you freeze, English.”

  “Pea soup and Johnny cake, Make a Frenchman’s belly ache! “

  “Mange la merde.”

  “Yellow belly.”

  “If you’re so brave, walk on ice, English. We dare you.”

  The dare cannot be disregarded. The English swarm in conference, and plump Protestant Quincy finds himself pushed out of the huddle amidst heroic cheers. He’s accustomed to being teased about his weight, and good-naturedly welcomes his first chance at bravado.

  But Quincy does one better than walking on ice. He gets out into the middle of the pond and starts jumping up and down, with his rolls of fat jiggling and the ice creaking and heaving. Marlene feels a nervous kind of hysteria rising. Everyone, French and English, stands giggling as the ice wobbles and cracks and bobs. And there is Quincy, not jumping now, his legs moving up and down on the ice in the slow pantomime that freezes time when something terrible is happening. Quincy’s eyes are full of far-away fear; his head is just above the water line; ice chunks vibrate around him. Now the boys are on the ice on their bellies, making a non-denominational chain to pull him out. They get him out, all right. He’s even laughing. His red woollen toque sticks to his ears, its wetness steaming in the frosted air.

  In winter, Hector’s horse trots right out onto the frozen river. The crisp covering of snow holds a faint tinge of blue. Hector creates his own road with horse and sleigh—his old cart on runners. At the back, the sleigh sags under two water barrels that fit against the floorboards.

  When the weather gets colder, Hector chops away at the hole in the ice, for it is into the same place each day that he lowers his buckets. Even after a storm, you can see the fine welts where the runners slip in beneath the skin of snow. Hector’s horse knows just where to go, just where to nudge the sleigh into the tracks. The old horse jerks ahead, back, ahead, all the while Hector standing on the little step behind the barrels, reins in hand. The horse inches the sleigh to the edge and Hector lowers the bucket into the black current. Some days, before Hector is finished, the sun sets red and flat against the crusted river snow. The man curses, breathing rapidly. The horse stomps, snorting white clouds; frost clings to its nostrils.

  If it is dark by the time the barrels are filled, Hector hangs a lantern on the front of his sleigh as he starts his rounds. Door to door, he fills pails and jugs with drinking water. The yellow light bobs crazily across the night; the villagers hear the jingle of harness bells as the horse approaches. They sigh as they reach for their buckets, and they go out to intercept the bobbing yellow light.

  “That Hector, it will be midnight before we get our water next time, you’ll see.”

  In November, Mrs. Smith gives Quincy and Marlene the catalogue so that each can choose one Christmas gift. There is an entire catalogue just for toys. It takes days and weeks to agonize over the choices. Skates? Meccano? So difficult, so lovely, to choose.

  Quincy and Marlene have been saving since October. Every winter, they trudge up and down the village streets showing Sparkies Sprinkled Greeting Cards. Every year, their customers order the same box. Madame Laviolette invites them in; they remove galoshes and mittens and pull a chair to the kitchen table. Madame is weary; she has been taking care of old Mr. Potts for years. He never gets better, but he never dies, either. Madame takes the poker and shakes down the ashes in the big stove. She brushes crumbs from the oilcloth on the table; she sits down and begins to leaf through the catalogue of novelties and cards. When she is finished, she examines the sample boxes. Cats leap from dark corners. Quincy and Marlene hold their breath. Madame pushes back her chair; she stands wearily and orders Sparkies Economy Box of 36 assorted greetings. No matter what time it is when Quincy and Marlene arrive, it is always dark when they leave. No one has ever ordered novelties but almost everyone needs a box of cards. For every box they sell, they get a dime.

  On the second Saturday in December, Quincy and Marlene go shopping in the city. Mrs. Smith pins purses into pockets, gives last minute warnings, watches through the front room window as they cross the field to the bus stop.

  The bus shakes and rattles along the old gravel road until the children think their teeth will fall out. They are deposited at the end of the line in front of E. B. Eddy, where they must take a streetcar across the river. Past the mill, past the falls, past the greasy spoons and into the centre of the city.

  The first stop is Woolworth’s, for lunch. They pace the food counter as carols blare and startle overhead. They remove one dollar and twenty-nine cents from each purse and scrutinize pictures of club sandwiches, french fries, hot fudge sundaes. When at last they are able to find stools side by side, they hoist themselves up and order two Christmas specials with the works: turkey, cranberries, one scoop of mashed potato, one of pale turnip, a spoonful of dressing, a scattering of peas. For dessert, a banana split. As they eat, they watch lifts shoot up and down; they hear voices from the bowels of kitchens below. Waitresses pounce upon stainless containers of chicken salad; up come butter and chocolate syrup in silver bowls. Quincy and Marlene twirl gently on their stools, sifting and storing every sight and sound.

  When the spirit of Woolworth’s is inside their bellies, they swivel down and head for the displays of powder puffs, ashtrays, pickle dishes, for it is here that they will purchase their gifts.

  Christmas Eve, Mr. and Mrs. Smith tell Quincy and Marlene they may stay up for Midnight Carol Service. They have to take the eleven o’clock bus to town, because the Protestant church is fifteen miles from the village. They arrive early and wait in the church basement while members of the choir dress in flowing robes and four-cornered hats. The children do not like to hear the choir talking of ordinary matters. They prefer to see them dressed, gowned, and singing loftily. When the first strains of the organ are heard, the members of the choir throw out their chests and roll their eyes to the sky.

  Home again, the Smiths go next door to visit Ti-Jean and his family, who have returned from Mass. Madame has baked tourtières and pigs-in-blankets, neat brown bits of pork curled inside crisp pastry. Flasks and glasses crowd the edge of the kitchen table. Everyone sings:

  D’où viens-tu bergère

  D’où viens-tu?

  Je viens de l’étable

  De m’y promener

  J’ai vu un miracle

  Ce soir arrivé

  Soon, everyone hushes, for Madame and her daughter are going to sing Minuit Chrétien in their silver-toned soprano voices.

  The Smiths return home, crunching over moonlit snow. The swamp at the edge of the field has frozen, and cattails are trapped along the surface ice. Peace sifts down over the village.

  The last event of winter is Carnaval. There will be dog races, songs, snow sculptures, skating prizes at the rink. Everyone must wear a costume. The mayor and the priest will judge. Pierrette and Hercules will dress up, as will Quincy and Marlene, Amélie and Jacques. Any child old enough to wear skates is included, even the ones who have to crawl on hands and knees across the fields to get there.

  Pierrette’s mother airs out her husband’s longjohns, gets out the ragbag, begins to sew. Pierrette will be a rabbit; her trapdoor in the rear hangs down to her knees; white fluff is plastered to her leggings underneath to make a fuzzy tail.

  Quincy will be Aunt Jemima; his friends call him Tante Jemeem. For a night and a day, two of the large brass curtain rings will
come down from the window to adorn Quincy’s vainglorious ears. Mrs. Smith smears cold cream on his cheeks and darkens his skin with oxblood shoe polish. A bolster from the armchair is stuffed inside his jacket. On top of all, a colourful blouse Aunt Minn has donated for the occasion, and a long woollen skirt that stretches to the ankles of his black skates. The final touch—a plaid bandanna from Grandma Smith’s old trunk.

  Everyone comes to Carnaval. Hervé the policeman and Poirot the barber dress up as a horse; someone plays crack-the-whip with their tail. A thin Père Noël arrives, even though it is February. He has leftover cinnamon-tasting hard candies to give away.

  All the little ones receive a prize. The older children are judged. The priest favours a tramp. The mayor likes the Saint Bernard with the keg around its neck. They compromise; both the Saint Bernard and the tramp are awarded fifty cents.

  The priest goes back to the church, his skirts billowing around hidden legs. Everyone comes out on the ice to sing. The men swell their chests:

  Chevaliers de la table ronde

  Allons voir si le vin est bon

  Allons voir oui, oui, oui

  Allons voir non, non, non

  Allons voir si le vin est bo-o-on

  Bottles are pulled from pockets; the keg is borrowed from the Saint Bernard, filled and passed around. The villagers sing and sing, and finally everyone goes home. Monsieur Poirot and Mr. Smith walk together, arms around shoulders:

  Prendre un p’tit coup

  C’est agréable

  Prendre un p’tit coup

  C’est doux!

  Prendre un gros coup

  Ça rend l’esprit malade

  Prendre un p’tit coup

  C’est agréable

  Prendre un p’tit coup

  C’est d-o-u-x!

  PRINTEMPS

  With spring come the storms. The villagers keep flasks of holy water handy on the shelf. Waves whip across the widest part of the river, lashing shore. Lightning splits the sky; the holy water is grabbed from the shelf, sprinkled outside and in, a little here, a little there. But not everyone is blessed. The Fourniers’ house goes up in flames, nothing saved but the old wringer washer and two kitchen chairs.