Breakthroughs

going to be fried crisp when we head up that way.”

Wearily, Sam reached into his pocket and displayed the tube of zinc-oxide ointment. Hiram Kidde laughed so hard, he had to take the cigar out of his mouth. When he started to flick the long, gray ash onto the deck, Carsten said, “Whoever swabs that up ought to swab your shoes, too.”

Kidde looked down at his feet. He could have seen himself in the perfectly polished oxfords. Three steps put him by the rail. The ash went into the Atlantic. “There. You happy now?” he asked.

“Sure,” Sam answered. “Why not? Way I see things, world’s looking pretty decent these days. Yeah, I’m going to burn for a while, but the Dakota’s home port is San Francisco. War ever ends, I figure we’ll go back there for a spell.”

“You burn in Frisco, too,” Kidde pointed out, “and that ain’t easy.”

“I know, but I don’t burn so bad there,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you one more thing, too: Brazil jumping into the war may make me burn, but it makes the limeys sweat. You come right down to it, that’s a pretty fair bargain.”

“Well, mon vieux, how is it with you?” Lucien Galtier asked his horse as they made their way up toward Riviere-du-Loup. A U.S. Ford didn’t bother to honk for them to pull over, but zoomed around the wagon and shot up toward town at what had to be close to thirty miles an hour. “I wonder why he is in such a hurry,” Galtier mused. “I wonder why anyone would be in such a hurry.”

The horse did not answer, save for a slight snort that was likelier to be a response to the stink of the motorcar’s exhaust than to Galtier’s words. But the Ford kicked up hardly any dust from the fine paved road. The Americans had extended it for their own purposes, not for his, but he was taking advantage of it. Jedediah Quigley had told him he would. Jedediah Quigley had told him quite a few things. A good many more than he’d expected had turned out to be true.

His mind couldn’t help doing a little of the arithmetic the good sisters had drilled into him with a ruler coming across his knuckles. If he had a motorcar capable of thirty miles an hour-oh, not today, not tomorrow, but maybe one of these days-he could get to town in…could it possibly be so few minutes?

“My old,” he said to the horse, “I begin to see how it is that the Americans have put so many of your relations out to pasture. I mean no offense, of course.”

A flick of the ears meant the horse had heard him. It dropped some horse balls on the fine paved road. Maybe that was its opinion of going out to pasture. Maybe that was just its opinion of the road. Behind him, some chickens made comments of their own. He never paid attention to what the chickens had to say. Their first journey into town was also their last. They did not have the chance to learn from experience.

Outside Riviere-du-Loup, the snouts of antiaircraft guns poked into the sky. The soldiers who manned them wore uniforms of American cut, but of blue-gray cloth rather than green-gray. Galtier cocked his head to one side to listen to them talking back and forth. Sure enough, they spoke French of the same sort as his own. Soldiers of the Republic of Quebec, he thought. Dr. O’Doull had said there were such men. Now he saw them in the flesh. They were indeed a marvel.

“What do you think?” he asked the horse. Whatever the horse thought, it revealed nothing. Unlike the chickens, the horse was no fool. It had come into town any number of times. It knew how much trouble you could find by letting someone know what was in your mind.

Lucien drove the wagon into the market square. Newsboys hawked papers whose headlines still trumpeted Brazil’s entry into the war, though Galtier had heard about it several days before from Nicole, who had heard it from the Americans at the hospital. The newspapers also trumpeted Brazil’s recognition of the Republic of Quebec. That was actually news.

He tried to outshout the newsboys and all the other farmers who’d come into the market square to sell goods from their farms. His chickens had a solid reputation. They went quickly. He made good money. Soon he was down to one last ignorant fowl. He waited for a housewife to carry it off by the feet.

But the chicken was not to go to a housewife and her tinker or clerk or carpenter of a husband and their horde of hungry children. Here came Bishop Pascal, plump enough to look as if he could eat up the whole bird at one sitting. Galtier hid a smile. The bishop was being a good republican-ostentatiously being a good republican-and shopping for himself again, instead of letting his housekeeper do the job. How she would scold if she found out how much a rude farmer had overcharged him! Lucien had no compunctions whatever. Bishop Pascal could afford it, and then some.

“Good day, good day, good day,” he said now with a broad smile. “How does it go with you, my friend?”

“Not bad,” Lucien said. “And yourself?”

“Everything is well. I give thanks to you for asking, and to le bon Dieu for making it so.” Bishop Pascal crossed himself, then held his right forefinger in the air. “No. Not quite everything is perfectly well.” He pointed that finger at Lucien Galtier as if it were a loaded gun. “And it is your fault.” As best he could with his round smiling face, he glowered. He sounded very severe.

“My fault?” Lucien’s voice was a startled squeak, like Georges’ when his son was caught in a piece of tomfoolery. “What have I done?” What had he done to offend Bishop Pascal? Offending the bishop could be dangerous.

“What have you done? You do not even know?” Bishop Pascal sounded more severe yet. He wagged that forefinger in Lucien’s face. “Do I understand correctly that I am not to officiate at the wedding of your lovely Nicole to Dr. O’Doull?”

“I am desolated, your Reverence, but it is so,” Galtier replied, doing his best to imply that he was desolated almost to the point of hurling himself into the St. Lawrence. That was not so; he felt nothing but relief. “You must comprehend, this is not my fault, and it is not meant as an insult to you. Dr. O’Doull is the closest of friends with Father Fitzpatrick, the American chaplain at the hospital, and will hear of no one else’s performing the ceremony.”

Only the truth there. That it delighted Galtier had nothing to do with the price of chickens. He wanted as little to do with Bishop Pascal as he could; the man had got too cozy with the Americans too fast to suit a lot of people, even those who, like Lucien, had ended up getting closer to the Americans themselves than they’d ever expected.

“One can hardly go against the express wishes of the bridegroom, true. Still-” Bishop Pascal always looked for an angle, as his quick collaboration proved. “I must confess, I do not know Father Fitzpatrick as well as I should. I am certain his Latin must be impeccable, but has he also French?”

“Oh, yes.” Galtier most carefully did not smile at the disappointment in the bishop’s eyes. “I have spoken with him several times. He is not so fluent as Major Quigley or Dr. O’Doull, but he makes himself understood without trouble. He also understands when we speak to him. I have seen many an English-speaker who can talk but not understand. I have some of the same trouble myself, in fact, when I try to use English.”

“Ah, well.” Bishop Pascal sighed. “I see there is nothing more to be said in that matter, and I see also, to my great joy, that this choice has not come about because I am diminished in your eyes.” Galtier shook his head, denying the possibility with all the more vigor because it was true. Bishop Pascal turned his forefinger and his attention in another direction. “Since this is so, perhaps you will do me the honor of selling me that lovely fowl.”

Lucien not only did Bishop Pascal the honor, he did him out of about forty cents for which the bishop, being a man of the cloth, had no urgent need. If Bishop Pascal proved unwise enough to mention to his housekeeper the price he’d paid to Galtier, he would indeed hear about it. He’d hear about it till he was sick of it. Odds were, he’d heard enough of similar follies often enough to try to keep quiet about this one.

“I thank you very much, your Reverence,” said Galtier, who could think of several useful purposes to which he might put forty cents or so. He waved at the empty cages behind him. “And now, since that was the last of the birds I brought to town today, I think I shall-”

He did not get the chance to tell Bishop Pascal what he would do. Three newsboys ran into the market square, each from a different direction. They all carried papers with enormous headlines, a different edition from the ones Galtier had glanced at coming into Riviere-du-Loup. They were all shouting the same thing: “France asks for armistice! France asks Germany for armistice!” Over and over, the words echoed through the square.

“Calisse. Oh, maudit calisse,” Lucien Galtier said softly. He needed time to remember that the Germans who were the enemies of France were allied to the United States, the supporters of the Republic of Quebec and, much more to the point, the homeland of his soon to be son-in-law.