He had sorted his dirty relics by what looked like size but turned out to be epoch. The largest tool was the oldest. He picked it up.
“This is six hundred thousand years old. A paleontologist visiting from Montpellier confirmed it.”
It was a big misshapen rock. I said it was hard to imagine what it had been used for.
Burdmoore picked it up. “This tool has been engineered,” he said, palming the rock, “for a specific use.”
“What use is that?” Pascal asked flatly. He had a way of addressing Burdmoore that suggested Burdmoore’s contributions were not welcome.
Burdmoore weighed the rock in his hand. “This is what our ancestors would have referred to, in their language, as head-smashing equipment.”
I thought it was funny, but Pascal insulted Burdmoore to Jean, quickly and in French.
“What did you say?” Burdmoore was gripping the rock. “Did you just call me an idiot? What gives, Pascal?”
“Part of what I appreciate about you, Burdmoore, is your directness and your simplicity of mind.”
“Fuck you, Pascal,” Burdmoore said.
He was drunk from the gasoline water.
“Lately, I’ve noticed you think it’s amusing to insult me. It’s not amusing and I’m tired of it. And I’m to the point at this moment where I gotta make a choice. Either bash your head with this rock or walk away.”
He walked away from Jean’s yard and disappeared into the dark.
“I’ll talk to him,” I said, getting up. “With a lot of Americans, feelings get buried, and result in these… outbursts.”
Pascal nodded. “He’s become a powder keg.”
“Go talk to him,” Jean said to me, and then to Pascal, “If you alienate him, I won’t have anyone to drink with. And our movement needs, shall we say, fermenters.”
“He took off with your six-hundred-thousand-year-old rock, Jean.”
“Ah, shit! No, but you know what? It’s just a rock I dug up and put in the collection. That’s a bunch of crap about the paleontologist.”
They were still laughing about that as I left.
THERE ARE NO LIGHTS outside Vantôme. The moon had not yet risen.
I caught up to Burdmoore.
As we walked in the dark, the church bells sounded the twelve chimes of midnight. When they ceased their clamoring, Burdmoore spoke.
“I’ve been at this a long time.”
“At… what?”
As I waited for him to answer, I mentally recited his rap sheet. There were trial transcripts, and other detailed accounts online of the armed group he’d been a part of in the late 1960s, a history described in lurid detail in a book—there were excerpts on Google Preview—put out by some grubby left-wing press.
“Don’t play dumb, sister,” he said. “Something is going down at that fair, with that minister. And most of us won’t have any idea what we’re walking into.”
I said nothing, a generally effective method for getting people to continue to speak.
“When I arrived here, I figured, you know, it takes time. To find out what’s going on. But the longer I’m here, the less Pascal tells me, and the more grunt work I somehow end up doing. And suddenly some shit happens, and no one admits anything. They torched that equipment in Tayssac. And they put everyone on the commune at risk. See, we get all the risk and none of the glory. And if there’s going to be a showdown, I want in. I want to know what we’re doing.”
“Can you keep a secret? Keep what I tell you to yourself?”
It was so dark that I could not see his face as I waited for him to respond.
Instead of answering my question, he said that he hadn’t realized how lonely he was. How culturally different these people were, until I showed up. How drawn to me he’d felt. Not in some sleazy way, he assured me. A sisterly way.
“They aren’t like us,” he said. “There’s just some difference you can’t get around. Even with you. Sure, you speak their language, but you’re more like me than you are like them. So maybe Pascal has indoctrinated me to his ‘affective layer’ bullshit.” He laughed. “Yes, I can keep a secret.”
“There might be something brewing that Pascal is not involved in,” I said.
“Is that right.”
Without seeing him, I felt him cogitating next to me in the dark. Focusing himself. Sobering up a little.
“A plan of action,” I said, testing the waters.
More cogitations. The sense he was open.
“Does Jean know about this?”
“No.”
The moon, still unseen, had announced itself in a quaking halo of yellow light along the line of the hills.
