Poached Egg on Toast by Frances Itani Page A

Baptiste Day at last! Even the dogs will be fancy, wearing crimped paper collars. The children have woven gay patterns of pink and white crêpe through the spokes of their bikes. The younger ones hold their windmills on sticks and run through the wind. The bonfire will be set beneath the cross, in the field beside Madame Lalonde’s. All week the villagers have been gathering sticks, dead trees, an occasional pilfered log from the bank of the river.
    The priest drives a big truck, stopping before each house in the village. The older boys help with the collection and chant, “Food for the poor! Food for the poor!” Everyone gives something, even the poor. A tall young man stands in the doorway rattling the priest’s money box while the woman of the house makes a choice from her pantry A can of peas will do. The priest supervises from the cab of the truck. The big boys climb back up, hanging on to the high boards, making important noises as they rumble through the streets.
    Just before dark, the procession begins. It winds its way like a tattered dragon around the dirt roads and down rue Principale. There is one float, and this is covered with tissue flowers.
    The children spin and whirr their bikes as they ride beside the float and then past, and turn again to rejoin the parade. The dogs become silly, and nip daringly at ankles and fleshy limbs. There are three old cars in the procession, and one big truck. The older boys are up there again, making the same important noises. The priest joins, sleek in his new black car. When the last of the stragglers reaches Madame Lalonde’s field, everyone fans out in a circle around the heap of wood and scrub.
    Will the timing be precise? All is still. The cross on the hill leaps into brilliance.
    The priest prepares a torch and lights dried branches and kindling. “Ahhhh!” The crowd tilts back. Soon the sky roars with fire. Flat rocks beneath the wood snap and crack in the heat—hot stone splinters across the night. The celebration becomes noisy and joyous. There is much singing. Each of the children receives a little bag of hard candy. Some of the candies are stuck together—still left over from last year’s Christmas party and from
Carnaval
.
    Third week of June, the orange bus drives away for the last time. The English shove remnants of their school year out the bus windows; the French scatter their scribblers into ditches along both sides of the road.
    No more pencils
No more books
No more teachers’ dirty looks
    The children, French, English, Catholic, Protestant, bury their differences for the summer. Together they explore the swamp in sunlight, picking marsh marigolds brighter than buttercups. They sneak up on frogs that have eyes like peeled grapes, peering over cloven lily pads; they lie in wait for hours, scooping unsuspecting tadpoles into jam jars for backyard aquariums. When they are bored, the boys chase the girls, threatening with garter snakes that twirl from their wrists. The girls turn their backs, bend, expose the insult of white cotton bloomers.
    Halfway through summer, construction crews arrive to work on the dirt road, and begin to carve out a highway. Rock is blasted into the air, settles in mounds, cracked and splintered.
    “There goes the Canadian Shield,” says Monsieur Lalonde. “Sky high! Fhooomph!”
    At the end of summer, the logs will travel the
real
highway, the river. Brimful of bobbing timber, edge to edge, every log stamped with company initials. Not that this keeps the villagers from pulling in the strays, sawing them into equal lengths, chopping them up for firewood.
    At nine, the siren wails. Hervé climbs on his bike. The sun sets. A remote hand pulls a switch. On top of the hill, the cross blazes once more.
    Madame Lalonde sighs. “That cross!”

Truth or Lies
    You women have it all ways, my Creative Writing prof says. All ways. He stares past me, out the window, at a line of rooftops ascending the hill. I’ve always wanted to be a