Free And They Danced by the Light of the Moon by Heather O'Neill Page B

needed one spoon and one fork and one dish and one bath towel and one chair at the kitchen table. That was Jules’s worst nightmare. He couldn’t stand the idea of growing up and ending up alone. He wanted to have a wife. He already knew with 100 percent certainty who he wanted that wife to be.
If there ever was such a thing as a princess in Val des Loups — and of course there was never any such thing as a princess in Val des Loups — then it would be Manon. The police chief used to stop his car and roll down his window to ask Manon when she was going to be old enough to marry him.
Manon’s father wore checkered pants and high-heeled leather boots. He frequently went without a shirt in the summer, and he had a tattoo of an eagle on his chest. Her father drove a canteen to the mines every afternoon. He sold the miners coffee and Jos Louis cakes. He had a little sign on the side of his canteen that said he sold the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world. Although how he could possibly know something like that was a mystery.
Manon’s mother had wanted a girl. She decided to continue having children until she had one. Her decision was legendary throughout Val des Loups because she had eleven boys before Manon was born.
Jules tried to remember all the brothers’ names so he could impress Manon. So she would know how serious he was about her. He counted them off on his fingers as he walked down the side of the highway.
She had a brother who was really skinny who everyone called Olive Oyl. She had a brother named Pierrot who used to drive a car with no doors on it. There was Alvin, who rode a motorcycle and wore a leather vest with roses painted on the back of it.
There was Réjean, who had lost an eye when he was seven and no one could remember how. There was Théodore, who had blond hair and all the girls found him handsome.
One of her brothers was a professional wrestler who did bouts in old ballrooms and church basements. His stage name was Mr. Magnificent and he had a manager in Sainte-Félice. She had a brother who everyone called Mon-Amour, after a song that was popular on the radio that he liked to sing. Charles only wore velour track suits and was a tae kwon do expert. Xavier was trying to get a licence to open a karaoke club. Everyone was excited about that.
Bruno had swallowed an ice cube when he was a baby and it had damaged his vocal cords, and that was why his voice was so low. When she was pregnant with Félix, Manon’s mother just thought she had indigestion. She took a Pepto-Bismol and Félix was brain damaged as a result.
Manon’s brothers upset the eco-balance of Val des Loups. Everyone was afraid of them. There were so many that it made them untouchable. There were so many mouths to feed that they were always hungry. The owner of the grocery store said that 80 percent of his carts were in their backyard. They would all sit on the porch drinking beer, wearing their rocker T-shirts and jeans with holes in them and fur hats and sunglasses. They were all over six feet, none of them could play guitar, they were all supposedly dating strippers, and, miraculously, only three of them worked in the mines.
Sometimes the mother wondered why in hell she had gone through so much trouble just to have Manon. She was just as irritating as all her brothers. She was just as messy and just as hard to manage. But she did have blond ringlets and skinny long legs, and the other women in the supermarket would always tell her that Manon was just getting prettier and prettier. And when she would hear Manon’s laughter coming from the backyard through the kitchen window, she knew she had made the right choice. Manon’s laughter felt like the first shot of whisky on a Friday night. It let you know that you were above ground, at least.
Whenever Jules saw Manon, she was often riding up on the shoulders of one of her brothers. Her father would let her stand on the palm of his hand. And he held her up while her mother screamed