For this first time since the land was settled in the seventeenth century, a paved road ran between Lucien Galtier’s farm and the town of Riviere-du-Loup on the St. Lawrence. If Lucien had had his way, the road would have disappeared, and with it the American soldiers and engineers who had built it. But, regardless of what he wanted, the Americans maintained their hold on Quebec south of the St. Lawrence, and had pushed across the mighty river at Riviere-du-Loup, intending, no doubt, to sweep southwest toward Quebec City, and then toward Montreal.
The push across the river and the newly paved road were anything but unrelated. As Lucien trudged in toward the white-painted wood farmhouse with the steep red roof after feeding the horse, he glanced at the much larger wooden building, painted what he thought a most unattractive shade of green-gray, that had gone up not far away, on what had been some of his best wheat land.
While he watched, a green-gray ambulance bearing on each side panel a large red cross inside a white circle pulled up to the building. The driver leaped out. He and an attendant who emerged from the rear of the vehicle carried a man on a stretcher into the U.S. military hospital. They hurried back and brought in another injured man. Then the ambulance, engine snarling, headed back toward Riviere-du-Loup to pick up more casualties.
Lucien wiped his feet before he went into the farmhouse. Though not a big man himself, he towered over his wife, Marie. That did not mean he could track muck inside without hearing about it in great detail.
“Warm in here,” he said approvingly. “It is only October, but the wind outside is ready for January.”
“May it freeze the Americans,” Marie answered from the kitchen. Like her husband, she spoke in Quebecois French. It was the only language she knew. Lucien had picked up some English during his conscript time in the Canadian Army, just as English-speaking Canadians soaked up a little French there. He’d forgotten most of what he’d learned in the twenty-odd years since he’d served, though having to deal with the Americans had brought some of it back.
He walked toward the kitchen, drawn not only by the warmth of the stove but also by the delicious smells floating out toward him. He sniffed. He prided himself on an educated nose. “Don’t tell me,” he said, pointing to the covered pot. “Ham baked with prunes. And are there potatoes in the oven, too?”
Marie Galtier regarded him with mixed affection and exasperation. “How am I supposed to surprise you, Lucien?”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “As long as we’ve been married, and you still expect to surprise me? You make me happy. That is enough, and more than enough. What do I need of surprises?”
Also in the kitchen, helping her mother, was their eldest daughter, Nicole. She was slight and dark like Marie, and put Lucien achingly in mind of what her mother had been like when he’d first started courting her. Now she said, “I can surprise you, Papa.”
“Of this I have no doubt,” Lucien said. “The question is, my little bird, do I want to be surprised?” He didn’t remember only what Marie had been like when he was courting her. He also remembered, all too well, what he had been like. He did not think the young male of the species likely to have shown any dramatic improvement over the intervening generation.
And when Nicole answered, “Papa, I do not know,” his heart sank. She took a long, deep breath before going on, and that heart, seemingly a relentless gymnast, leaped into his mouth. Then she said, “I have been thinking of doing nurse’s work at the American hospital. It is very close, of course, and we could use the money the work would bring.”
After all the dreadful possibilities he had imagined, that one seemed not so bad…at first. Then Lucien stared. “You would help the Americans, Nicole? The enemies of our country? The allies of the enemies of France?”
His daughter bit her lip and looked down at the apron she wore over her long wool dress. To Galtier’s surprise, his wife spoke up for her: “If a man is hurt and in pain, does it matter what country he comes from?”
“Father Pascal would say the same thing,” Lucien replied, which made Marie wince, because the priest at Riviere-du-Loup, whatever anyone’s opinion of his piety might be, collaborated eagerly with the Americans.
“But, Papa,” Nicole said, “they are hurt and in pain. You can hear them moaning in the night sometimes.” Lucien had heard those moans, too. They had been sweet to his ears. He shook his head in dismay to discover his daughter did not feel the same. Nicole persisted, “You know what I think of Father Pascal. You know what I think of the Americans. None of that would change. How could it? And they would be giving money to people who despise them.”
“You don’t even speak any English,” Galtier said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew he was in trouble. When you had to shift your reasons for saying no, you were liable to end up saying yes.
And Nicole pounced: “I can learn it, I know that. It might even be useful for me to know if, God forbid-” She didn’t go on. She didn’t need to go on. Lucien had no trouble completing the sentence for himself. If, God forbid, the United States win the war and try to make us all use English afterwards. That was what she’d meant, or something very much like it.
He didn’t try to answer on the spur of the moment. Believing Canada and France and England and the Confederacy could be defeated went dead against all his hopes and dreams. What he did say was, “How Major Quigley will laugh when he learns you are working for the Americans.”
He spoke with more than a little bitterness. Nicole bit her lip. The French-speaking U.S. major had placed the hospital on Galtier land not least because Lucien would not collaborate with the American occupying authorities.
Marie spoke up again: “Actually, that may be for the best. The major may believe we are coming round to his view of things after all, and so become less likely to trouble us from now on.”
Lucien chewed on that. It did make a certain amount of sense. And so, instead of putting his foot down as he’d intended, he said, “We shall speak of this more later.” His wife and eldest daughter nodded, outwardly obedient to his will as women were supposed to be. He knew they both had to be smiling inside, though. Sooner or later, they would get what they wanted. Talking about things later was but one short step from giving in.
At supper, he discovered he was the last one in the family to hear about what Nicole had in mind. That saddened him but didn’t unduly surprise him. For one thing, he did more work away from the farmhouse than anyone else. For another, he was the one from whom permission would have to come. Nicole would have wanted to know she had support from the rest before bearding him.
“I wish I could go there, too, and make money of my own,” his daughter Susanne said wistfully. Since she was only thirteen, they would not have to worry about that unless the war went on appallingly long. Or, of course, unless there is another war after this one, Lucien thought, and then shivered, as if someone had walked over his grave.
His older son, Charles, did not approve of Nicole’s plan. “I say the Americans are just another pack of Boches, and we should have as little to do with them as we can.” He spoke with the certainty of seventeen. In another year, he would have gone into the Canadian Army to serve his time. The only good thing about the war was that it had rolled over this part of Quebec before he could take part in it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Georges, who was a couple of years younger than his brother and almost the changeling of the family: not only was he larger and fairer than his parents and brother and sisters, but he also had a rollicking wit out of keeping with the pungent sarcasm Lucien brought to bear on life. Now he grinned at Nicole across the table. “Maybe you’ll meet a handsome American doctor and he’ll sweep you off your-Oww!”