The Fall of the Year (4 page)

All right, I conceded. Maybe, even as we spoke, Foster was putting some hard questions to God Himself. Demanding, absolutely demanding, that, as promised in scripture, the heretofore ineluctable mysteries of the universe and his place in it be disclosed to him at last. Might not Foster be posing to God the questions mankind had asked of Him since the tribulations of Job, the questions at the heart of human existence? If so, what would God say?

Father George hesitated. Then he shook his head again. “It's hard enough to guess at what people will do, Frank. As for God, I have no idea. Neither does anyone else.”

 

Well. As Foster Boy himself had often said, life must go on. One morning in early June I lifted my eyes to the ridges rising in serried ranks to the mountains west of the Common and saw that the last of the spring snow was gone from the summit of Jay Peak.

I decided to go trout fishing. It was black-fly time; in the dooryards of Little Quebec, the smokers had been started up, rusty steel barrels in which damp chunks of black spruce were kept smoldering night and day to discourage the black flies and mosquitoes. The roadside ditches that Foster Boy had combed for bottles were pink and purple with wild lupines. High on the ridge above Louvia DeBanville's, the new leaves of the hardwoods were still more yellow than green, and the sunlight fell through the foliage in a rich golden haze. Drifting down the trail above ray head at intervals of about thirty seconds came a progression of brilliant yellow-and-black tiger swallowtail butterflies. The brook trout rose readily to whatever flies I tossed into the stream, splashing right up to my feet to get at them.

Not far from the clear-cut where I'd lost the overshoe tracks ten days before, I set down my fly rod and fish basket and struck into the woods to check once again for any sign of Foster Boy. Of course I found nothing; but I spent an hour or so searching anyway, looking for something I knew I would not find, shrouded by the dense Vermont woods and the mysteries and sorrows of mankind, which no priest or prophet, no scholar or savant, not the wisest men and women in small villages or great cities the world over, can ever truly fathom.

2

When Sylvie and Marie Bonhomme were quite young, maybe eight and seven, they were caught out on Little Quebec Mountain in a blizzard. They were in the gravest danger of freezing to death when a little blue Madonna appeared to them, illuminated like a Christmas tree angel, and led them straight as a string through the storm to their house in Little Quebec.

—Father George, “A Short History”

 

O
NE SUNDAY AFTERNOON
, a week or so after Foster Boy vanished, Father George dispatched me in his Roadmaster to visit Louvia DeBanville, who had sent word to the Big House that she wanted a ride into town immediately, if not sooner. Louvia's shanty was perched on a low wooded knoll overlooking the Boston and Montreal railroad tracks, the American Heritage mill, and the straggling French Canadian enclave of Little Quebec, where the clairvoyant was widely respected, especially by the older generation, not only as a perceptive seer but as an herbalist and matchmaker. Most of the rest of the village regarded her as something of a crank but took care not to cross her for fear of her sharp tongue. Yet despite Father George's own frequent disagreements with the fortuneteller—she was forever giving his parishioners advice that was contrary to his—from my early boyhood he had sent me to her place to stack fire-wood, clear a path through the snow, and take her presents of venison and trout.

Louvia's place was as gloomy as the village graveyard at midnight. Dark, looming hemlocks crowded up to her shack on all sides. On the banks of the stream that seeped out of the woods in back grew the fortuneteller's herb garden, rank with dogbane, ragwort, tansy, love-lies-bleeding, and all kinds of other plants with dubious medicinal properties. From dawn until dusk a pair of Toulouse geese and a lame mallard duck with a gleaming emerald head patrolled her precincts. As I climbed the path through the woods to her house, I had to watch where I put my foot at every step.

If you didn't know Louvia, her appearance alone was enough to give you a start. She stood an inch or two under five feet and wore long, bright-colored housedresses of the old-fashioned kind called dusters, which reached nearly to her ankles. Her hair was coal black, not a strand of gray in it anywhere. Her cheeks were rouged like a cheaply embalmed corpse's, with a compound she prepared herself from a vein of red hematite high on Little Quebec Mountain. About her at all times hung the sourish whiff of wood smoke, from the uncured hardwood slabs she scavenged from the furniture mill and burned in her kitchen range.

When it came to fortunetelling, most of Louvia's methods were conventional enough. She deciphered tea leaves, seized your hand and stared at it indignantly while muttering to herself in French, or squinted into a chunk of rose quartz she'd found years ago on the mountain, which she used as a gazing ball and referred to as her “Daughter.” Her specialties were love, money, careers, matters of health, and the locating of lost items—so as she and I walked back down to where I'd left Father George's Buick, I asked her about the missing savant.

“Items, not people,” Louvia snapped, as she climbed into the front seat. She reached into her reticule and drew out first her red high-heeled shoes, then her homemade sealing-wax bridgework, which she carefully inserted into her mouth. “The day before Foster disappeared he came up to consult me to see if I saw ‘an attractive young wife' in his future, if you can imagine such a thing. You're the one who needs a wife, Frank, and I don't mean those wild young Frenchies from Little Quebec that you've been running with since you've come home from college.”

“Good God, Louvia, what the hell are you talking about? I'll be starting at St. Paul's in September.”

“Never mind St. Paul's. Drive down to Letourneau's Bakery. It isn't every day of the week that a backwoods fortuneteller has a chance to get her hands on a magic potion.”

As we drove, Louvia told me that the night before she'd had a visitation from “the other side.” Two elderly deceased sisters from Little Quebec, Sylvie and Marie Bonhomme, had manifested themselves to her and instructed her to go to the bakery they'd owned there, where a secret recipe known only to them, and once used to bake bread for the Last Supper, would be revealed to her.

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. I vaguely remembered the old Bonhomme sisters myself. They had baked bread in an ancient stone oven in a flower garden behind their patisserie. The loaves had had a wonderful fragrance and flavor. Even Father George, a born skeptic, had told me the bread was said to have restorative properties, though this was the first I'd heard of a magic potion. As far as I was concerned, the search for Sylvie and Marie's miraculous recipe had all the earmarks of one of Louvia's many wild goose chases.

As we drove into Little Quebec, we seemed to enter a different country altogether. The mill workers' row houses were painted in a dozen different gaudy pastel colors, like the houses across the border in Canada. Many had bright orange metal roofs, which sparkled in the afternoon sunshine. Dooryards were ablaze with irises, poppies, and other spring flowers. Vivid patchwork quilts flopped from clotheslines, and sky-blue plaster Madonnas gazed placidly out into the dirt street from upended bathtub shrines.

Even in this hamlet of blossoms, Letourneau's bakery stood out. Behind a black iron railing, its front lawn was aglow with violets. Early-blossoming peonies, as crimson as Louvia's homemade rouge, lined the slate flagstones leading up to the porch. Bright blue morning glories clambered up the iron posts and handrails along the steps. A bathtub Madonna surveyed us from the flower beds.

The patisserie was bright and clean and fragrant with the aromas of baking bread and fresh coffee. Along one wall ran a spotless glass case crammed with golden loaves, some long, some as round as river stones. Another case displayed glazed buns. There were tortes and pies, cream-filled shells, pastries topped with glazed peaches and candied apricots. A wedding cake with white and pink frosting sat at the end of a short counter with several stools, where customers could enjoy a cup of coffee and a pastry.

Behind the counter, removing a tray of piping hot loaves from a wall oven, was a tall young woman with long black hair and eyes the color of the morning glories on the railing. Louvia spoke to her in French, and the girl replied rapidly in a clear voice. Though I couldn't make out a word, I could hear the constant suggestion of laughter in her voice, and wondered why.

The tall girl flashed me a smile, her blue eyes dancing, and I felt something I could not put a name to. It was as if, with that one glance, she had seen deep inside me and been both amused and delighted with what she had seen. And though I was positive we had never met before, something about her was familiar.

Louvia and the girl continued to converse volubly. Finally Louvia turned to me. “This young woman speaks excellent French. She claims to have lived in Montreal and Paris. She's working here this weekend for the Letourneaus, who've gone to visit relatives in Canada. She doesn't know a thing about the old sisters or their magic potion. She wants to know why you keep looking at her.”

“I was going to have you ask her the same thing,” I said. “Ask her what's so funny, while you're at it.”

The girl, who wore a white, lacy apron over a dark blue dress that brought out the brighter blue of her eyes, looked at me and laughed out loud. Behind dark lashes her lovely eyes were constantly laughing.

Louvia went over to the display case and ordered a raspberry tart. The girl put the tart on a white plate and poured a cup of coffee.

“I've instructed her to show you the old stone baking oven out back,” Louvia told me. “Watch her carefully. She has a look in those saucy blue eyes that I don't at all care for.”

Hoping that the laughing bakery girl didn't understand any English, I followed her outside and around behind the patisserie. She walked as lightly as a dancer. Once she looked back over her shoulder, her eyes dancing. In the back yard sat the disused stone oven, its brick chimney overrun with morning glories. The girl said something in French. Her teeth were as white as the frosting on the wedding cake inside.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I don't understand much French.”

“That's quite evident,” the girl said to me in perfect English, laughing. “This, at any rate, is the fabled baking oven your grandmother wanted you to see. As you can plainly observe, it's no longer in use. Rather like her, I should imagine. Is she always this disagreeable?”

“She isn't my grandmother and she isn't really disagreeable,” I said, still recovering from my surprise. “That's just her way.”

The girl looked me straight in the eyes, with her oval face very close to mine. “Her way is to be disagreeable then. Why are you making excuses for her? If she isn't your grandmother, what is she?”

“She's a friend.”

“Indeed? I have heard of such friendships.”

At close range, the girl's eyes seemed a slightly darker aqua color. And while they were perpetually laughing, like her voice, her wide-set blue eyes seemed serious as well.

“Why do you keep staring at me like that?” she said.

“I think you're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,” I said, astonishing myself.

She blew out her breath between compressed lips, like a person blowing out a candle. “That and a quarter will purchase you a cup of hot coffee in the patisserie, nothing else. Have you seen enough of this wonder of an oven? I have a great deal of work to do inside. University tuition to pay back. Travel money to save. I'm not slaving here for my health, you know.”

“Where are you going on your travels?”

“That's for me to know. Has anyone ever told you you ask a great many questions?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, Louvia has. The friend I came here with.”

“Louvia! I knew she was a gypsy. We have to get back inside before she robs the shop blind.”

The girl made no move to leave. Her face, framed by hair as jet black as her small polished shoes, was inches from mine. Her breath smelled like cloves, like the sweet Williams growing nearby. Her frilled white apron nearly brushed my legs. “Look,” she said, tilting her head toward the shop. “The curtain's moving at the window. Just as I suspected, the crone's spying on us. Let's give her something to be outraged over.”

Before I knew it, the bakery girl had thrown her slender arms around my neck and kissed me hard on the mouth. Then she grabbed my hand and led me back around the corner of the shop, where we met Louvia coming down the steps.

The little blue Madonna in the bathtub seemed to follow the fortuneteller with her painted eyes. Louvia spat in the direction of the plaster statuette and crossed herself in reverse. The girl laughed, rattled off something in French, gave my hand a squeeze, and ran lightly up the steps. At the top she looked back once more.

“Hurry up and get in the car,” Louvia said to me. “We didn't travel down here for a box social. I intend to locate that recipe if it's the last thing I do.”

“Au revoir, Frank,” the girl with the morning-glory eyes called out, and disappeared inside.

 

“What did the little tart do to you out back?” Louvia said as we drove back down the street between the bright houses. “I had time to eat a ten-course dinner while you were dallying with her. Did she make any untoward advances?”

I laughed. “What I want to know is how she knew my name?”

“Obviously she overheard me say it.”

“I'm positive you never mentioned it in her presence.”

“Don't contradict me. Inside, while she and I were talking, I threw in your name. You didn't catch it, it sounds different in French.”