That dope, what crap, he thought angrily. What did that frog know about it? Had Pierre here ever roustabouted in heat over a hundred under Gleb damn Neeling? Who’d give a guy a stout poke in the ribs with a wrench because some minor safety protocol had been (briefly) neglected? Well, Neeling had been right to do it. He sure had. Safety first. Injuries cost a company. You didn’t want to see a fellow injured. So, therefore: firmness. Be a little rough. That way, the lesson got in there.
Net result?
Fewer people hurt.
Neeling was a doer, God love him, the whoring old bastard.
You know one thing you rarely heard about in the good old U.S.A. anymore? Monsieur Frog? A young fellow dying of appendicitis. At twenty-eight. Like Grandpa’s brother had. Because a road got washed out. And the horse-drawn cart couldn’t make it through. Imagine you go back in time and drop that young guy into the backseat of a big old SUV, fly him over a perfect four-lane to some gleaming modern hospital, save his life.
There was a story often told. Perhaps you’ve heard this one. Don’t stop me if you have, though, ha ha (I dearly love to tell it): Little boy’s grousing: doesn’t like cars. Because of “the pollution.” You know where this one’s going, I bet. The father pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Then I suppose you’ll want to walk.”
End of objections from el kiddo.
Your choice, Jacques.
Dying in the back of a horse cart stuck in the mud? Or zinging toward help, air-con blasting?
Anyone with a lick of sense would choose the latter.
We had.
The world had.
That was what was so damn stupid about it. People forgot the empty larder. Forgot drought, forgot famine. Forgot what it was like to be at the mercy of the world. The Nesbitts’d brought over a charity basket. During that lean period. After the hay burned up, the little feeder stream went dry, Bremer refused to re-up their loan. You best believe I was drooling. Father shot me a look. Move the slightest muscle toward that basket, my young swain, his eyes were saying, you’ll find yourself bunking down in the barn with the heifers. The bread in that basket was rock-hard and the bacon stringy and the apples home to more than a few worms.
But to us it was a feast.
Whereas nowadays folks padded past climate-controlled cases of out-of-season vegetables and fish from faraway seas and meat from animals who fed in meadows under mountain ranges whose names a person could hardly pronounce, thinking, Yap, yap, yap, big deal, pork from Denmark, salmon from the Bering Strait, loaves of woven bread from Ferrara, all of this is my right.
When what it was, was a goddamn miracle.
How had that bounty made its way here?
Did it walk?
Just magically appear?
Go waltz on someone else’s feet, Henri.
A wave of pain washed over him, causing his mind to forgo all nonessential activities.
Golly, goddamn, he thought.
It would pass.
It had to. Had to.
Well, it wasn’t.
It. Was. Not.
Breathe, I said.
He startled, amazed at how much the voice in his head sounded like the voice of a real woman speaking to him from just a few inches away.
Don’t be afraid, I said.
You’re with Frenchie, he said.
He was, of course, in a sense, correct.
I allowed him in, yes, I said. As a courtesy. My mistake. I most sincerely apologize. It will not happen again, I assure you.
I said all this in my gentlest voice, which never fails to charm. A charge, frightened, resides alone in the baffling country of their illness. Their separation from the world has begun. They delight in any prospect of an ally. The rest of creation has dimmed. Everything on which they have depended begins crumbling away before their very eyes.
Then I appear.
Get lost, he said angrily. I don’t want you.
This was—
Unusual.
To say the least.
Normally I am received quite warmly.
