Read Online Poached Egg on Toast by Frances Itani - Free Book Online Page B

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