Free A Dismal Thing To Do by Charlotte MacLeod Page B

he didn’t do so bad for a boy from Bigears. You run into him down to Fredericton, eh?”
    “Yes, but please don’t mention it if you should happen to run across him. I’m not supposed to know who he is.”
    “Huh. So he’s gone in for the cloak-an’-dagger stuff now? Well, I s’pose that’s all part o’ the game if you want to get ahead. ’Twouldn’t be my cup o’ tea an’ I shouldn’t o’ thought it would o’ been Eyeball’s when we was playin’ one ol’ cat at recess forty years ago, but that’s the way it goes. If he ever lets you in on the secret, tell him Fred Olson says hello. At least I don’t have to make believe I ain’t me.”

Chapter 8
    P ERCE BERGERON WAS PRECISELY where Fred Olson had said he’d be, out in his barn looking mournful. He was sitting on a high stool at a workbench built into the front left-hand corner, doing something to a piece of equipment whose use Madoc could guess the general nature of but didn’t care to hear the particulars.
    “Afternoon, Mr. Bergeron,” he said. “I’m Bert Wadman’s brother-in-law. My name is Rhys.”
    “Oh, the Mountie. Glad to meet you. Fred Olson sent you over about my truck, I’ll wager.”
    “As a matter of fact, he did. I’ve brought my wife for a little visit with Annabelle, and Bert happened to mention your problem. I came down to ask Fred about it, because I thought it might possibly tie in with a bigger one we’ve run into.”
    “You mean there’s a gang going all over the province stealing bull trucks?”
    “Heavy equipment of various sorts, actually. From the way Fred describes your truck, I’d doubt very much if there are many like it around.”
    “And you couldn’t be more right. I’ve never seen another one like ours. My father built that bull box himself, and had it mounted to his own specifications. Pa was a man ahead of his time, if you want my opinion. Only the time caught up with us and now it’s all this goddamn artificial insemination. Hell of a way to treat animals, but what can you do?”
    He threw down the instrument he’d been working on, and pulled out a drawer from under the bench. “Fred tell you about my father’s advertising campaign? Now, that took imagination and enterprise. That was Pa all over, imaginative and enterprising. Damn, I miss that truck! It’s like losing Pa all over again.”
    “You were his only son, Mr. Bergeron?”
    “Hell no, I was his fifteenth. Some of them were twins, of course. Pa was sixty-seven when I was born, and as good a man as he ever was. Sired two more after me, but they were both girls, Annette and Finette. Mama called her that because she said Finette was positively the last, and she was. Mama wasn’t getting any younger herself by then, you know. ‘Forty-eight’s too old to be washing diapers,’ I can remember her saying. So Pa bought her a new washing machine, which didn’t change her mind any, not but what she didn’t appreciate the gesture, you understand. Yes, Mr. Rhys, I’ve got brothers old enough to be your grandfather. Damn near old enough to be mine, if it comes to that, scattered from here to hell and gone. They all turned out imaginative and enterprising, like Pa. Lit out and made their fortunes in the wide world.”
    “But you stuck to the farm.”
    “Oh yes, I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else but here. Besides, I couldn’t leave the parents. By the time I was full-grown, they were getting on a bit.”
    Madoc nodded. Elzire would have been pushing ninety by then. Perce must be another of Eyeball Grouse’s classmates himself, or pretty close to it.
    “My brother Armand stayed around, too, but Armand was never one for the bulls, unless it was a bull moose. He likes the woods. Started guiding before he was fifteen. Pa said if that was what Armand wanted, then that was what Armand ought to do. He said Armand would find his way, and Armand did. He married one of the McLumber girls from out back and started his own hunting