Counting on Grace (11 page)

Oh please, Pépé. Don't be gone away. Not now. Not when I am supposed to be watching you. Don't give Mamère no more reasons to be angry with me.

I remember it is June and it is a Sunday. Pépé always went fishing on summer Sundays. That's where he has gone, down to the river. I can bring him back before Mass lets out. I can have him tucked right into bed by the time they come up the hill.

If only my legs would move more quickly and that shuttle pounding away in my head would stop slapping back and forth.

My feet carry me across the empty road and down the path that winds around the schoolhouse. Nobody will be out and about until Mass is over. Please, Père Alain, I pray, please talk long today.

I slide into the woods, where it is cool and quiet. I ain't been down this way since the day I followed Arthur to the trapper's shack. I call Pépé's name, but my voice is feeble. It don't even stop the birds from their singing. My bare feet trip on the knotty brambles and I grab for a tree to steady myself, but I go down anyway. The damp ground cools my hot cheeks and I rest for a while, turning my face one way, then the other. It feels good not to move.

“I'm coming, Pépé,” I call out, but he don't answer.

In the distance I hear the train coming north, hooting once, then twice like an owl. Then I don't hear no more after that.

Someone is carrying me.

“Pépé,” I say. “We have to go back home now. We have to make the soup.”

“Shhh,” says the man's voice. My face is rubbing against his scratchy coat. I don't open my eyes.

Bells are ringing. Maybe they are inside my head as well.

“Je I'ai trouvee,”
shouts French Johnny's voice. Now I am sure I am hearing things. We bounce along, and he grunts like an animal as we climb a hill. Suddenly, we move out of the shade of the woods and the sun hits me full in the face. I am rolled out of his arms into another's.

“Grace,” whispers my father, his breath a tickle in my ear.
“Merci a Dieu.”

“Pépé is fishing,” I say, my eyes open now. But my father's head is nothing but a black spot in the middle of the light. “I went down to the river to get him.”

“Fais dodo,”
he whispers in my ear. Is he ordering me to sleep or telling me a secret? I can't tell. “Close your eyes,” he says. It
is
an order. I obey.

“French Johnny found her in the woods,” he says when we enter the house. I feel the heat of many people moving about in our small kitchen, but still I keep my eyes closed. Papa will tell me when I can open them.

“My God, not her too,” I hear my mother scream, and the room goes quiet.

“She is alive,” says my father. “Burning with fever.” He
won't let anybody take me away from him, and lowers me to the mattress himself.

I don't remember my father ever carrying me before. I feel lonely when he lets me go.

I am dreaming. Me and Pépé are walking along the river. I am carrying a bucket. Inside, the fish slide around on top of each other and their silver scales gleam in the sun. Then Pépé slips into the river and I call to him to come back. His head bobs along in the current and he is waving goodbye to me as he floats away. He is smiling.

“Are you going home to Canada?” I call. I am speaking English to Pépé and this is strange even in a dream.

“Yes,” he answers.
“Grace a Dieu.”
Thanks be to God.

That's what Grace means. Thanks be.

Someone is hushing me. I am so thirsty. Who is stuffing my mouth with cotton? I twist my head and spit again and push the hands away.

“Suck the rag,” says the voice. It sounds like Madame Boucher, but when I open my eyes, nobody is there.

Next time I wake, Mamère is singing me a lullaby.
“Fais dodo,”
she sings. “Fais
dodo, mon petit oiseau.”
I keep my
eyes shut. I don't want her to see that I am listening. I don't want her to think I'm nothing but a poor, sickly thing that's going to die on her the way my sister Claire did.

Pépé is the one who's dead. He was hit trying to climb on the train when it was still moving. My father tells me the first morning that I can sit up.

I do not believe him. “Pépé is floating in the river,” I say. My voice is still a croak. “He waved goodbye to me. He was going home to Riviere-du-Loup.”

My father nods his head. “You are right, Grace. Pépé has gone home. But he won't be coming back.”

I'm too weak to fight against the crying. Papa pulls me onto his lap and rocks back and forth in the chair, the way he rocks on his heels when he plays the accordion. It seems he don't mind holding me when we are alone. He never touches me in front of the others.

“Mamère told me I could untie him,” I say at last.

“As I did many a time.”

“But I left him alone when I went to pick the radishes.”

“Your Pépé knew what he needed to do. He would have found a way to go no matter who had been with him.”

Now my father is the one who says the rosary and gives the blessing. That night after supper, we gather in a circle around him. There are only five of us now.

“Bon
Dieu,”
he says with his eyes closed. “Thank you for giving our Grace back to us. And for gathering Pépé to your own sweet reward, the place where he suffers no more.”

His voice sounds like music. It rises and falls like the bellows on his accordion. I've never really noticed that before. Pépé's voice was always the biggest in the house.

After the rosary, Papa rests his hands on each of our bowed heads and prays over us. Mamère is last. He puts his lips close to her ear and a shiver passes through her shoulders when she hears what he says.

“Mamère is quiet,” I say to Delia that night. The bed feels big for the two of us. Henry is sleeping in the kitchen now.

“She can't forgive herself,” says Delia to the air. “For slapping Pépé.”

The next morning on the way to the mill, walking next to Mamère, I decide to tell her what Pépé said.

“Mamère.”

“Mmm.”

“Pépé said to give you a message.”

She stops suddenly halfway down the hill to look at me. The other people part and move past us in the same easy way that the river flows around a rock.

“What did he say?”

I am trying hard to remember his exact words. “ ‘Tell your mother it's time for me to go.’ Just that. I thought he
was talking about Canada again. I said you'd be home from Mass soon and that he could tell you himself.”

“Only me?”

She's testing me again. I take my time with my answer.

“Yes,” I say at last. “The message was for you.”

She's looking out over my head at something in the distance. We don't speak again.