Free Poached Egg on Toast by Frances Itani

lies in the creases of her neck.
    When Jacques tells his father about the bill, Monsieur Lalonde growls, “What do those fatheads need my money for? They’re robbing us blind, cal-ice.”
    Monsieur does not have to worry about the thick soft pages of the bill; it is not he, after all, who must face Madame Henri each day across the counter. No, Monsieur can afford to snub his nose at the store as he drives past each morning in his Vachon truck.
    Summer’s end. All week the river has been a mass of bobbing timber as the logs tumble and heave towards the Eddy mills. Half a mile downriver, some of the logs pile in a defiant jam between the remnants of an old stone wall and a mossy island that is inaccessible because of rapids. Later, the men will work the rafts to free the main jams. They won’t bother with the logs that drift to shore. In autumn, when the water rises, the strays will float out again.
    The setting sun bursts golden beyond the trees. Water flings itself towards the roar of rapids. The sounds of night drift through the air.
    AUTOMNE
    All fall the villagers have been fitting stovepipes, painting them with aluminum paint, banging out the soot, putting up the oil stoves, shaking down the ashes in the coal stoves. Scuttles stand ready. The coalman backs his truck into the yards, lowers his shute and sets the coal roaring into bins that have been sectioned off in corners of toolsheds and barns.
    The last logs along shore have been pushed out by the children, or have floated away as the water has risen. Mon Oncle Piché sits on his veranda eating bread and jam, waiting for the children to come and sit beside him. He is sad because soon he will have to move his rocking chair back to the kitchen by the stove, where he will sit all winter, eating, filling out the mass of his shapeless body.
    School has started. The Protestants and Catholics are at it again. The boys can’t wait to begin their snowball fights, and search the sky for signs of the first white flakes. For now, peashooters will do.
    Mothers pull breeches and duffel coats from the attics. They trace around children’s feet and cut cardboard soles to stuff into last year’s galoshes, trying to make them last one more winter. They sew patchy fur collars onto coats, hiding claws, hoping to keep out the wind.
    HIVER
    A bluish-white covering muffles the village. Rue Principale quickly freezes and the children skate on the road at dusk. The rink boards are in place in the field and the barnboard shack with its potbelly heat is made ready. Music is pumped through a loudspeaker, which is attached to a pole at one end of the rink.
    The older girls skate round and round, flicking long dark hair. They sing about jealousy, flashing their eyes. Young men skate, arms around the girls’ waists. Legs are sleek and synchronized to the blaring music.
    The orange school bus streaks into the village to collect the Protestants. Quincy and Marlene and a handful of English are driven to the one-room school miles away in the country. The Catholics have their own school in the village—a two-storey grey stone with black fire escape clinging to the side. During the school term, the orange bus reminds the children that there are differences to be considered. The older boys from both schools, the Grade Sevens, are appallingly monstrous and rowdy. In spring and fall they throw rocks; in winter they ambush with snowballs. The French, on their way to school, have to pass the English huddled at the bus stop. Across the road there is a pond in a small open field, partly fenced. The fence can easily be pushed down into the snow.
    One day the boys are having their usual morning exchanges:
    “I hope you freeze, English.”
    “Pea soup and Johnny cake, Make a Frenchman’s belly ache! “
    “Mange la merde.”
    “Yellow belly.”
    “If you’re so brave, walk on ice, English. We dare you.”
    The dare cannot be disregarded. The English swarm in conference, and plump Protestant Quincy