been worse; at least he'd asked about her finger and not some other part of her anatomy. She had to hide a small shiver as she answered, 'Don't be stupid, Tom. Anybody who's ever tried to get Jake Featherston to do what he wants-or what she wants-has ended up either sorry or dead. And before you ask, I think it's more luck than anything else that I'm still here.'
More than her words, she thought, her tone got through to Tom. His eyes, blue as her own, went wide. He blurted, 'Sweet Jesus Christ, Anne, you're scared to death of him!'
'Anybody who's met him and who isn't is a fool,' she said. 'Standing up against him is like standing up to a hurricane. You can yell and scream and fight and carry on, but he'll blow you over just the same.'
He laughed. She'd known he would, and she'd known why. Sure enough, he said, 'That's how people talk about you, you know.'
'Oh, yes.' She waved the words aside for now; she'd assess the hurt later. For the time being, she wanted to make sure she was understood: 'But he's… he's serious about things. He's serious all the time. And what he wants, happens. I don't always know how it does, but it does. Think about it. The Whigs had run things here for as long as the Confederate States were a country. If they couldn't stop Jake Featherston-and they damned well couldn't-what can? Nothing. Nobody.'
Tom Colleton shook his head in disbelief. 'You talk about him like he really is a hurricane. He's just a man, Sis.'
Anne shook her head, too. 'Oh, he's a man, all right. He sleeps. He eats. He goes to the toilet.' That jerked a startled laugh out of her brother. She went on, 'He'll die one of these days. If that nigger had shot him at the Olympics, he'd've died right then. But as long as he's alive, he's not just a man. For a long time, I thought he was, too. So did a lot of people. Look what's happened since. We were wrong, every single one of us.'
Another cigarette out of the pack. The scrape and flare of another match. The harsh stink of sulfur before the mellower smell of tobacco smoke. Tom blew a smoke ring up toward the ceiling, maybe to give himself time to think. He said, 'I never reckoned anybody could make you talk like that.'
'Did you think I did?' she flared. 'But Jake does make me talk that way. And you'd better be careful how you talk, too. If you do anything stupid, I can't protect you. Have you got that? I can't. Featherston and the stalwarts will do whatever they want. Oh, he might listen to me if I beg hard enough. He might. I've done some useful things for him, and he might throw me a bone. But I walked away from the Freedom Party once, remember? I thought he was finished, and I went back to the Whigs. He never forgets something like that. He might use you to pay me back, too. Don't give him the chance. Please.'
Had she ever said please to him before? Oh, she'd said it. She must have. Everybody did, for politeness' sake. But had she ever meant it the way she had twice in the past five minutes? She didn't think so. Children meant please, especially when they got into trouble. Usually, grownups didn't have to.
Her desperate urgency must have got through to her brother. He put out the latest cigarette-by now, the ashtray was full of butts-and got to his feet. 'All right,' he said. 'I'll keep quiet. But it's not for your sake. It's for Bertha and the kids.'
'I don't care why. Just do it,' Anne said. He left the flat without another word. She thought he'd slam the door, but he didn't. The restraint was worse. It felt like a slap in the face. She wondered if they would ever have anything to say to each other again.
Lucien Galtier looked up at the sky. The sun was sliding down toward the northwest, but it wouldn't set for a long time yet. When summer days came to the country by Riviиre-du-Loup, they lasted. Long days meant short nights. He'd always thought that was good. It let him get more work done and spend more time with his family. Now… Now, suddenly, he wondered.
Oh, the work went on. He couldn't imagine the work stopping altogether. If the work stopped, wasn't that a sure sign he was dead? He could still do the work, too. He took a certain somber pride in that. True, he wasn't young any more. But he was still strong. Thinking about that made him laugh.
He was walking back from weeding the potato plot, hoe on his shoulder like a soldier's rifle, when an auto came up the track from the road toward his farmhouse. He picked up the pace, like a soldier going from ordinary march to double time. That machine belonged to the O'Doulls.
Sure enough, his son-in-law got out of the motorcar and stood there waiting for him. 'A good day to you!' Galtier called to Dr. Leonard O'Doull. 'And what brings you here?'
'What brings me here?' O'Doull patted the iron flank of the motorcar. 'My automobile, what else?'
'Thank you so much.' Lucien unshouldered the hoe and made as if to swing it, like a soldier starting bayonet drill. 'Let me ask the question another way, then: why have you come here?'
'Oh! Why?' What he meant might not have occurred to Dr. O'Doull before. Galtier didn't believe that for a moment, but his son-in-law played the role of a suddenly enlightened one well. 'I had some business at the hospital'- he pointed to the big building the U.S. Army had run up on Galtier's land during the war-'and I thought I would stop by as long as I was so close.'
'Good. I'm glad you did. Come inside, if you like, We can have a little something to drink, smoke a cigar-with an afternoon's weeding behind me, I could use a cigar, and I could truly use a drink.'
His son-in-law laughed. 'Motion carried by acclamation, without a dissenting voice.'
Lucien stowed the hoe in the barn. He and Leonard O'Doull went into the house through the door that led to the kitchen. Galtier knew the place wasn't so clean and neat as it had been when Marie was alive. All he could do was hope she wouldn't have been too displeased with the way he kept it up. He busied himself pouring a couple of glasses of applejack, and handed one to the American who'd married Nicole.
'Merci beaucoup.' Dr. O'Doull reached into a jacket pocket and took out two cigars. He gave one to Galtier. 'Here you are. I delivered a baby boy yesterday. These are part of the reward from the father.'
'I thank you. I thank him. Come-let's go into the front room.' When they'd sat down, when they had the cigars going, Lucien raised his glass of homemade Calvados. 'Salut!' he said, and drank.
So did O'Doull. After a good swig, he whistled softly. 'Son of a bitch,' he said in English, a tongue he used these days only when taken by surprise. He sipped again, more cautiously, and returned to French: 'Potent stuff.'
'Yes, a strong batch,' Lucien agreed. Quality varied wildly from one jug to the next, as was only to be expected when people made the stuff in small stills with no tedious government regulations or even more tedious taxes. 'Strong, but good. So… How wags your world?'
'Well enough, if I didn't set fire to my liver there,' Leonard O'Doull replied. 'For myself, for Nicole and little Lucien, all is well, as I hope it is for you.'
'As you say, well enough.' Galtier puffed on the cigar. He'd had better. Whoever the new father was, he was a cheapskate. He paused. 'All is well for your family, you say, which is good. All is not so well somewhere else?' He wasn't sure he'd heard that in the doctor's voice, but thought he had.
And O'Doull nodded. 'I am not nearly so sure I like the direction in which I see the world headed.'
Galtier tried to make sense of that. 'What man ever does?'
'Non, mon beau-pиre, not like that,' O'Doull said. 'Not the little thoughts that make a man wonder if he is all he should be. When I say the world, I mean… the world.' His expansive gesture not only took in the whole world, it nearly knocked over a lamp on the table next to the sofa where he sat. Maybe the applejack was hitting hard and fast. Maybe, too, he did have something big on his mind.
'And what of the world?' Lucien Galtier asked. 'Most of it goes its way far from here. When I remember how things were when that was not so, I think this is not so bad. I can do without soldiers and bombs and such things on my doorstep. That ambulance driver I saw, poor fellow, wounded in his very manhood…' He shuddered and sipped again from his own drink.
'If you will recall, though, helping the wounded is why I first came to Quebec.' O'Doull picked up his glass. Instead of drinking, he stared at the pale yellow apple brandy. 'I have been comfortable here for many years, forgetting the world and by the world forgot. But I fear one day I may have to go back to my proper craft, healing the wounded once more.'
'Here? In Quebec?' Lucien shook his head. 'I do not believe it.'
'Nor I,' O'Doull replied with a sweet, sad smile. 'But the world, poor thing, is wider than Quebec, and wilder, too, worse luck. And I am a doctor, and I am an American, and if my country should ever need me in another war-'
