For Sure (40 page)

“And tanks a whole lot, eh, you're wonderful nice to help us out.”

New Brunswick has more kilometres of road per inhabitant than any other Canadian province. Numberless statistic.

“Petitpoint? Do I even know wot dat is?”

Élizabeth laughed. She could understand Zed's reaction, but tried a bit of cajoling:

“It's quite engrossing once you get started . . .”

Zed thought about it for a moment, he liked to think he was open-minded, but he had to admit:

“Well, we'd really have to be steady on de go before I'd try dat . . .”

Élizabeth took his hand, raised it to her lips and kissed it.

To confess to someone else or to oneself, the difficulty is the same.

Étienne turned out to be more helpful than Terry had anticipated when it came to putting up the tent.

“Like dis, Dad?”

“Haul some over dat way.”

The boy put his back into it and the tent's nylon spread evenly.

“Dat's wicked! A fellow might tink you'd already done dis!”

Terry placed the stake and held it straight while Étienne hammered it solidly into the ground. Then, having learned the importance of planting the corner stakes in the right order, the son followed his father to the opposite corner of the tent.

“Now, you haul on dis one 'ere.”

Ordinarily a jigsaw puzzle contains 15 different shapes for pieces, sometimes 16. Six of these shapes are far more numerous than the others. The pieces with two cavities and two heads are of two types: either the cavities and heads are opposed on an essentially rectangular shape, or the cavities and heads are aligned on two of the four sides of the piece. There are also pieces with three heads and one cavity or the reverse, with three cavities and one head. And finally, there are pieces with four heads and pieces with four cavities. Some, though not all, puzzles include longish pieces with two heads, placed respectively about halfway on each long side. The nine other forms that can be considered classic are far less numerous because they belong to the edges of the puzzle, and three of them belong only in the corners. The corner pieces necessarily have one cavity and one head, two cavities or two heads. The other edge pieces contain either one cavity and two heads, two cavities and one head, three cavities, or three heads. If it exists at all, a jargon specific to jigsaw puzzles is not widely known; people name the pieces as best they can — cavities, bays, blanks, heads, knobs, tabs — according to their individual imaginations. Creating a jargon is also a sport.

Brigitte is not entirely wrong, and Élizabeth knows it. And yet, this time, things are a bit different. Didn't she herself undertake steps to move into the lofts? Wasn't she attracted by this lifestyle at once communal and marginal?

“What's her name?”

“Marianne.”

“Ah, that's a lovely name . . .”

“And she's awfully cute.”

“And the loft, is that going to work?”

Between the unavowed and the Other there is a close link.

While the men put up the tent, the women were in the field picking flowers.

“Looky, Marianne! Blueberries!”

Marianne did as Carmen did, bending over the little blue bunches, picking berries and eating them.

“Mmmm . . . dat's not a bad bit good.”

“Mmmm . . .”

When Carmen moved to another bush, Marianne followed. When Carmen blew a tiny bit of stem off her tongue, the little one spluttered, as well. When Carmen smiled at the thought that she'd brought a little monkey into the world, Marianne rubbed the side of her head with the back of her hand. And when Carmen began to sing softly without realizing it the chorus of “No Woman No Cry,” Marianne rocked back and forth and sang along
no momen no no.

In addition to fixing screws, there are Archimedes' screws (very useful in water pumps and grain handling), lead or translation screws (screw threads and ball nut drives) and worm screws (in gear systems).

“Dad, do you fall off de moon as well?”

“If I falls off de moon?”

“Yeah, when yer sleepin'.”

Terry thought about it for a moment.

“You mean in me dreams?”

“Yes.”

. . .

. . .

“Naw, I don't tink I ever fell off de moon.”

“I do.”

“Is dat right! And den wot?”

“Everytin's black an' I fall an' fall . . .”

“How does you know it's de moon yer fallin' off?”

“Well geez, Dad! On account of I'm sittin' on it!”

“Awh . . .”

. . .

“How come you're fallin'? Has somebody pushed you off?”

“No. I fall meself.”

“Wot? You let yerself fall, or you get tripped up or sometin' an' den you fall?”

“No, I don't trip. I just fall.”

. . .

“I like it a bit, even doh it's kind o' scary. An' den I wake up.”

“Hun!”

MANNOW:
n. m. — 2005/2013; diminuitive of man. — by ext. immature adult male. “
They're not men, they're mannows.”
(Daigle, Majzels) — MAN. MINNOW.

“I like golf, too.”

“Phew!”

Élizabeth chuckled. Zed continued:

“Dat's strange all de same. I wouldn't 'ave pictured you a golfer.”

“Why not?”

“Don't know. It's like der's sometin' 'bout golfers, sometin' 'bout dem you can tell dey're golfers.”

Élizabeth rummaged through her handbag, pulled out a photo of herself on a golf course, and showed it to Zed. She pointed to the person beside her in the picture.

“That's Brigitte.”

Zed looked more closely at Brigitte.

“You two look alike. Like sisters almost.”

The idea made Élizabeth smile:

“No, it's better that she's my friend rather than my sister.”

MEANNOW:
n. m. — 2005/2013; lively bait fish. “
I never see'd so many meannows afore dat, a dozen schools all fightin' fer de worm.”
(Daigle/Majzels) — MAR. lively minnow, ideal bait. — FIG. Particularly immature adult male.
“A mannow, you can argue it's not his fault. A meannow is so headstrong he's beyond help.”
(Daigle/Majzels)

Terry, Carmen and the children had begun to spread their sleeping bags in the tent when the owner of the field came out to see them.

“De wife's cooked up a whackin' great big stew o' green beans an' salted pork fer dinner. Why don't ya come in an' eat wid us?”

Carmen and Terry looked at each other.

“Dat's awful kind of you, but just campin' out in yer field is perfect.”

“Right now dis minute, de blueberry pie's cookin'.”

“Booberries!”

That was Marianne, her fingers and lips stained purple, who could not restrain her enthusiasm. The large, sturdy man bent 90 degrees to address her:

“I'd say der's someone 'ere wot likes de blueberries… eh?”

Marianne nodded yes. Carmen, meanwhile was worried about the supper, and felt the need to point out that they'd promised the children to…

“'Tisn't that we wouldn't like to, only . . .”

“An der's a whole lot of bread an' molasses if dey don't like de stew. Bum-cheeks bread an' small rolls de wife made 'erself dis mornin'.”

Terry joked:

“Did she know we was comin', den?”

The man, whose neck and arms the sun had turned to copper, left it at that:

“Alright den, let's say in a half-hour or so?”

“Tanks a bunch! We'll be der!”

There are a variety of bingo games: the straight line — horizontal, vertical, or diagonal — the postage stamp in five numbers, the four corners, the hollow diamond in 14 or 15 numbers, the bonanza in 53 or 55 numbers, the gold ball, lucky ball, coverall in 50 numbers, the
X
in 18 numbers, the
B
and
O
in 14 numbers, the treasure hunt, the winner's circle, the 50/50 draw, the jackpot, coverall jackpot, and the progressive jackpot. Some games are triathlons, in which the winner must complete the hollow diamond and the treasure hunt, and hit the lucky ball. The pre-bingo is merely a warm-up period. All this requires a good understanding of the equipment and the ratios, particularly the luck/number of cards and luck/number of cards/cost per card ratios. Calculating the cost per card requires knowledge of the number of sheets per booklet, which varies depending on whether the booklet is small, big, or free.

“Myself, I never been golfing. Not dat I never had a chance to. I know a whole lot of people dat golf.”

“I like it when you can walk, take your time. But that's increasingly rare.”

Élizabeth imagined what it would be like to play golf with Zed, a beginner:

“It's a sport that's funny at first, even ridiculous. Then, with time and practise, something else settles in. A kind of complicity. Or love.”

Zed had heard a great many things said on the subject of golf, but never this.

“Hun! Now golf'll give us love, you say? Well, dat would explain how come so many folks're playin' it.”

With that, he turned right on the red light at MacBeath Avenue and Mountain Road, one of the city's main arteries, which leads up to Magnetic Hill.

“You ever been to Magnetic Hill?”

Burn-beating consists in loosening and burning the topsoil along with plants and roots, thus producing ashes, which enrich the soil.

“Eat, eat! Takes a shockin' long time to make a good stew like dis 'ere one, so you're best to eat yer fill when it comes time.”

Terry did not need to be told twice; he gladly accepted a second helping piled as high as the first. Carmen only took a few more string beans because she'd already helped Marianne, who'd done her best with the generous helping Madame Gaudet had served her. Étienne, who'd eaten his entire portion without complaining, was now ready for some bread and molasses.

“You wants bread an' molasses as well! Good Laird, dis boy's hungry sometin' fierce! Do you folks not feed 'im?”

Monsieur Gaudet — Terry and Carmen had still not managed to call him Alcide, as he'd insisted several times they should — was becoming increasingly talkative.

“So den, yer off to Caraquet! I knows a couple o' fishermen out dat way. Big fisherman.”

Hearing this, Étienne concluded that Alcide was declaring his affinity for individuals as corpulent as himself.

Noyer le poisson
: French expression, literally to drown the fish, meaning to confuse the issue so as to confound the person being addressed. Comparable to the English red herring?

“I never knew me real fawder neider. Me mudder met dis 'ere fellow when I was six. So den, ee's like my fawder.”

Zed and Lauzia Hébert were sitting at the kitchen table. The elderly woman had layed out tea and white cake for Zed. Chico was in school.

“I had no cocoa fer de frostin'.”

Zed was revelling.

“It's perfect just as it is. Been a while since I ate a real homemade cake. It's shockin' delicious!”

Madame Hébert seemed a little sad. Zed would have liked to cheer her up:

“Yer welcome to come along wid us if you like.”

“No, I don't tink I'll go. Maybe anudder time. Last time I went, it put me in a desperate state.”

“Dat's understandable.”

“Dey tell me I oughtn't to overtop me mind wid it . . .”

But the poor woman did not look convinced.

“I try, I do. 'Tain't all dat easy when 'tis yer own child. I can't very well abandon de boy.”

“Fer sure.”

“Fawder Cormier comes 'round from time to time. Do you know 'im?”

Zed had to admit he did not.

“Ee's a comical fellow, sometimes. Ee says 'tisn't healty to be prayin' all de time.”

“Awh, is dat right?”

Wings beating, fervour soars above techniques and tactics to go to the heart of things. Fervour believes the heart of things belongs to her by right. She sees techniques and tactics as inferior processes seeking to restrain her ardour. The concept torque-clash is an excellent example of fervour. It illustrates clearly that fervour prevents neither errors (remarry-mule), nor pleasures (sprite-spoons), nor excesses (career-lees).

That evening, as he was roasting his seventh marshmallow, Étienne learned that he was sometimes confused.

“In Moncton, sometimes, it's confusing for dem, French an' English, I mean.”

“Der's some dat mix French an' English so much dey don't even realize der speakin' two different languages. Dey tink some English words is French.”

“We was tinkin' to show dem places where everyone speaks only French. I meself grew up in Dieppe. Might as well say I grew up bilingual. So, I sometimes mixes up me French and English words.”