do, which, for Madelaine, would be kill this bastard anyway.
Then everybody’s babies safe from him.
Lots of others out there, though.
Forty of them, any given time.
Pret’ bad people.
I wish Benetsee would show up.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He whistled a little in between drags. This afternoon he would go to the bar in Toussaint and fiddle with a couple of cousins down from Canada.
Big family, mine, Du Pré thought. Indian family. These cousins they are from people come down here with my great-great-grandfather, then they go to North Dakota and back up to Canada. Always in the Red River country. I like that country, sings in my bones.
Goes to Hudson’s Bay.
Wonder how them whales are doing.
Wonder that Hydro-Quebec kill that River of the Whale yet. Damn it. I should ask Bart, he sends money to fight that.
The fields of winter wheat were ripening now July. They were going to red-gold and that hard red wheat was getting ready for the harvest. Ring good on the shovel, that hard red wheat.
Du Pré remembered threshing, the combine crews, everybody itching from the chaff. The streams of dark red winter wheat shooting out of the pipes and into the trucks lumbering along on the side of the combines. Sell all the hard red wheat you could grow, anybody. Make pasta, them good noodles. One-fifth protein. Come from Russia, that hard red wheat.
The Dukhobors brought it, I hear.
Du Pré liked the Dukhobors, a pacifist Russian sect. If a Dukhobor got really mad with you, they undressed. I will not fight you, I am naked before your violence, but I am mad at you.
The Mennonites, during the First World War they came and got the men and hung them from handcuffs on a pipe till their shoulders dislocated, because they wouldn’t fight.
The Hutterites. Good farmers, shrewd traders.
Good people, just don’t have much truck with the rest of the world. Who can blame them?
Du Pré flicked his smoke out into the yard. The grass was meadow grass, already drying and yellowing and going dormant.
Du Pré got his fiddle and he went to his old cruiser and he got in and turned around and went down the long drive.
That Bart he is off digging a big irrigation ditch with Popsicle, his lime green diesel shovel. One we find the answer to his brother’s death with. Find a lot of things. Find out more truth than maybe we want to know. That is the thing about truth, there is only too much or not enough.
Du Pré drove slowly, windows down, listening to the meadowlarks trill. Big yellow-breasted birds got a black wishbone on their chests. He glanced over and saw a brilliant bluebird, winged sapphire, sitting on the fence post its house was nailed to.
Got to get the hole the right size in the house or you got starlings. Yuppie birds, maybe. Lots of squawk and sharp elbows. No taste.
Du Pré was in no hurry. It took him an hour to go the twenty miles to town. He went to Madelaine’s.
He parked and went in the front door.
“Du Pré!” Madelaine called. “There is a box for you there!”
Du Pré looked at the box on the coffee table. Shirt box.
Madelaine, she make me another shirt.
“OK,” said Du Pré. “I see, shirt box.”
“Smarty,” said Madelaine from the bathroom. “You look in that, see how your woman love you.”
Du Pré lifted off the top.
Bright red shirt with black piping and fiddles over the pockets made of porcupine quills. The shirt was heavy silk. Du Pré picked it up. A red silk Métis sash was folded underneath. Fiddles on that, too, and DU PRÉ on the back in black beads. Very fine beads. Two circlets on each side with coyotes howling at yellow moons on them. Du Pré felt something crinkle in the sash’s pocket, on an end that hung down. He fished out a dollar bill.
Bad luck to give an empty purse.
Madelaine came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a heavy turquoise silk/satin shirt with yellow flowers embroidered on it in fine beads, a long yellow skirt, and yellow cowboy boots. Her rings were all
Then everybody’s babies safe from him.
Lots of others out there, though.
Forty of them, any given time.
Pret’ bad people.
I wish Benetsee would show up.
Du Pré rolled a cigarette. He whistled a little in between drags. This afternoon he would go to the bar in Toussaint and fiddle with a couple of cousins down from Canada.
Big family, mine, Du Pré thought. Indian family. These cousins they are from people come down here with my great-great-grandfather, then they go to North Dakota and back up to Canada. Always in the Red River country. I like that country, sings in my bones.
Goes to Hudson’s Bay.
Wonder how them whales are doing.
Wonder that Hydro-Quebec kill that River of the Whale yet. Damn it. I should ask Bart, he sends money to fight that.
The fields of winter wheat were ripening now July. They were going to red-gold and that hard red wheat was getting ready for the harvest. Ring good on the shovel, that hard red wheat.
Du Pré remembered threshing, the combine crews, everybody itching from the chaff. The streams of dark red winter wheat shooting out of the pipes and into the trucks lumbering along on the side of the combines. Sell all the hard red wheat you could grow, anybody. Make pasta, them good noodles. One-fifth protein. Come from Russia, that hard red wheat.
The Dukhobors brought it, I hear.
Du Pré liked the Dukhobors, a pacifist Russian sect. If a Dukhobor got really mad with you, they undressed. I will not fight you, I am naked before your violence, but I am mad at you.
The Mennonites, during the First World War they came and got the men and hung them from handcuffs on a pipe till their shoulders dislocated, because they wouldn’t fight.
The Hutterites. Good farmers, shrewd traders.
Good people, just don’t have much truck with the rest of the world. Who can blame them?
Du Pré flicked his smoke out into the yard. The grass was meadow grass, already drying and yellowing and going dormant.
Du Pré got his fiddle and he went to his old cruiser and he got in and turned around and went down the long drive.
That Bart he is off digging a big irrigation ditch with Popsicle, his lime green diesel shovel. One we find the answer to his brother’s death with. Find a lot of things. Find out more truth than maybe we want to know. That is the thing about truth, there is only too much or not enough.
Du Pré drove slowly, windows down, listening to the meadowlarks trill. Big yellow-breasted birds got a black wishbone on their chests. He glanced over and saw a brilliant bluebird, winged sapphire, sitting on the fence post its house was nailed to.
Got to get the hole the right size in the house or you got starlings. Yuppie birds, maybe. Lots of squawk and sharp elbows. No taste.
Du Pré was in no hurry. It took him an hour to go the twenty miles to town. He went to Madelaine’s.
He parked and went in the front door.
“Du Pré!” Madelaine called. “There is a box for you there!”
Du Pré looked at the box on the coffee table. Shirt box.
Madelaine, she make me another shirt.
“OK,” said Du Pré. “I see, shirt box.”
“Smarty,” said Madelaine from the bathroom. “You look in that, see how your woman love you.”
Du Pré lifted off the top.
Bright red shirt with black piping and fiddles over the pockets made of porcupine quills. The shirt was heavy silk. Du Pré picked it up. A red silk Métis sash was folded underneath. Fiddles on that, too, and DU PRÉ on the back in black beads. Very fine beads. Two circlets on each side with coyotes howling at yellow moons on them. Du Pré felt something crinkle in the sash’s pocket, on an end that hung down. He fished out a dollar bill.
Bad luck to give an empty purse.
Madelaine came out of the bathroom. She was wearing a heavy turquoise silk/satin shirt with yellow flowers embroidered on it in fine beads, a long yellow skirt, and yellow cowboy boots. Her rings were all
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