Vandal Love Read Free Page B

skirts, and others, longhaired, sporting dainty glasses with coloured lenses. They ventured into his field, stumbling on the furrows, watching the swift, automatic motion of his digging as he brought up potatoes from cold, clean dirt. He considered them violently, twisting the shovel deeper.
    Though it was hardly possible not to overhear stories of the U.S., Jude had never seen any point in joining the speculation. Talk of fine pay and cheap, easy living meant nothing to him. Maybe, for some, the stony earth and brief summers were not enough, but he’d wanted little else. Only now, for the first time, he wondered who the tourists were, where they came from, what they knew. His father had been one, and his mother had gone south, and so perhaps, he considered, they were his people, too.
    When he returned to the house, the aunts had just arrived, quiet now. Isa-Marie’s soft, persistent coughing came from upstairs. She’d always been sensitive to the chill—
frileuse
, the aunts had called her,
la frileuse
. She hadn’t left her bed or eaten in days. Afraid to wake her, he listened from outside her room. The few times he’d gone in just to hear her breathe he’d stepped softly, opened or closed the door as quietly as he’d been able. Hearing her cough, he felt as if he was struggling against something invisible, suffocating and blinding, like a blanket over his face. He wanted to know what he could do, who to fight.
    From the unlit hallway he listened to his aunts.
    C’est triste
. But she would never have married. It was only a matter of time.
    Oui
, it’s sad. She should have gone to the convent.
    Yes, the convent—she’d have made a good nun.
    It is sad.
Tellement triste. Elle était si jolie
.
    Jude stumbled outside. A grey sun settled faintly against a distant, watery horizon. Far off, the church’s spire was a frail ensign between sea and mountains. The cold mustered about him.
    At the docks he found Hervé Hervé. He asked what they should do —rare words, stumbling,
Qu’est-ce … qu’on devrait faire?
Hervé Hervé had been drinking. He’d just tied down the weir and put up the boats. He stopped and took in Jude with his single eye.
    There’s no point, he said against the windy silence. They die. People die. To call a doctor would be a waste of money. You can’t change anything.
    In the darkening chill Jude rushed against this rage. He went to the woodpile and grabbed the axe and swung. He split savagely, driving aimless, glancing blows until the handle splintered. He crouched, panting. Not knowing how to cry, he could only groan. Stiffly, he walked to the outhouse. It was set back in the trees. He opened the door and knelt as his grandmother had taught him in church years ago. He lifted the board. Without closing his eyes, he pushed his head inside, down through the thin layer of ice.
    The emigration to the factory towns of New England had begun after the rebellions of 1837 and 1838, and increasedto a furor by 1880, the year of Hervé Hervé’s birth. As a boy, he’d watched for wagons in the grey light, the huddled travellers with collars pulled to their ears. He and his father had sworn never to give up these lands. Their hatred of those who left was perhaps their only point of agreement with the curé. Several times each month, sermons described emigrants as lazy and self-centred. They were weakening the Church’s divine mission in North America. They were corrupted by the desires of their wives for luxury.
Aux États
they would lose faith and language. Understandably the first French-Canadians had gone because of politics, for the lack of farmland and opportunity. But leaving the northern winter needed few reasons and had many: stories of the south, of busy sunlit streets and booming factories, the clear proof of wealth that returned in the form of men with store-bought suits and golden pocket watches. At the turn of the century, an article in the paper said that there were ten cities in New