Counting on Grace Read Free Page A

way.”
    But Arthur keeps yelling back at me as French Johnny hauls him up the hill. “I hate you, you tattle.”
    That's the worst thing anybody can be. A tattle. I've never been that. But Arthur don't believe me. I know he's not ever going to speak to me again.
    “Arthur, I'm not a tattle,” I yell, but nothing comes back at me ‘cept my own echo.
    “Pépé,” I whisper. And I take off for home, where my grandfather will be waiting. When bad things happen, he's the only one I want near me.

    Pépé can't work no more. He lies on a bed in the kitchen near the stove, chewing on his pipe. We made him give up his cigarettes so he didn't burn himself up, but we figure the pipe keeps him company and most of the time he forgets to light it anyway. That's a good thing, ‘cause there's no extra money for tobacco.
    Pépé mostly lives in his bed. Every night we kneel in a circle around him so that he can lead the family rosary and bless us before we sleep. Sundays, Père Alain, our priest, brings him Holy Communion. On Wednesdays after school, I get him
La justice
, the French newspaper, from Mr.Dupree at the store. I sit on the edge of the bed and read it to him. He likes to hear me using our language ‘cause he knows I've been studying English in school all day.
    Truth is Pépé don't know how to read, but long after I'm done he worries away at those pages with his fingers as if touching the words will make them stand up and say their names to him.
    The other day, Delia found Pépé walking down the hill to town when he hadn't been out of the kitchen for months. He told her he was going home to Canada and when she tried to lead him back to our house, he pushed her away. Even though Pépé spends most of his time in bed, his arms are still strong from years of plowing. It took two of the men coming up the hill from the mill to coax him home again. When they called him Monsieur
L’Habitant
, that calmed him down ‘cause that's the Canadian word for farmer.
    But that night he shouted out in his sleep and I heard the squeak of my parents’ bed and then my father's voice calming him down. A little later on, Papa pulled out his accordion and played
“Les Bucherons,”
a song about lumberjacks that always reminds Pépé of home. Pépé must have fallen asleep with the music. I did too.

    When I get home, Pépé is propped up in the corner of his bed, snoring. I tiptoe over to slide the newspaper from between his fingers, but his eyes fly open and he holds tight.
    “Mon petit chou-fleur,”
says Pépé. He is always making up names for me. Cauliflower, jewel, bird. “You've come back to see your old Pépé.”
    “I always come back, Pépé,” I say, and I kiss him on both of his leathery cheeks. He smells like stale tobacco and food gone bad. We clean him up real good on Sundays, but this is a Friday.
    “So, how was that English school of yours today?”
    “Miss Lesley said I'm one of her best readers.” I don't tell him all the rest. It's still working itself out in my mind. Pépé is the only one in the family who understands my ways. He don't ask me questions, but if I want to talk, he lets me go on without hushing me.
    Truth is in this family, nobody pays either one of us much attention. Going home to Canada is all Pépé ever talks about. And we know he's never going there again. But I let him pretend. And he lets me chatter.
    I dip water from the bucket into the kettle for his bowl of tea. In the distance, the whistle blows for the afternoon train. In our town, the noises all come from bells and whistles. There's the mill bell, morning and evening, the opening school bell, the church bells on Sunday and the train whistle four times a day.
    The mill stands between the river and the train track and we got to cross those tracks whenever we go to the mill and the store. Every mother in town is always at us about those trains and the Dupree boy who forgot to look and was crushed. Even though that happened years ago