He nodded goodbye and set off at his slow pace.
I watched him, my car stopped there on the road. He did not look back.
IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING—the fair was three days away—when I sent an email to the Moulinards’ shared account and said I wasn’t feeling good and would not be there today.
I was feeling great, actually. The morning was overcast and cool, perfect weather for my plans. I locked up the house and drove to a gardening and hardware outlet in Boulière, purchased the equipment on the list I’d made, and headed toward Vantôme.
Passing along the lake, I was alert for the man who might be Bruno on the side of the road, but I saw no one.
I parked next to the bus shelter on the D79. (I had never once seen any bus, or anyone waiting for a bus in this shelter.) I walked off the road, up into a wooded area.
I had a job for the old draft horses, Denis and Françoise. And at a much better rate than they would make working the grape harvest.
They were at their encampment, seated at a small fire, pouring heated milk from a pan into their tin cups, and adding packets of instant coffee. “We don’t have another cup,” Françoise said. I assured her I was fine.
I sat cross-legged, mirroring how they sat, and gazed into their fire in the blank-faced manner that they did, as if much of what coursed through our minds could not be converted to words (and even if it could be, it shouldn’t).
In the firelight, under shadowy woods on this gray day, their two faces, weathered and creased, took on a medieval character.
Françoise broke the silence.
“We saw him.”
“Who?”
“The man in the car that doesn’t have a top.”
“Is that so,” I said.
“Yesterday he passed the bus shelter on the D79. An hour later, he passed by again, going in the other direction. And then he went by once more.”
It was just a ruse I’d put them on, to create a feeling of paranoia, mentioning the man in his Chrysler Sebring. I was impatient to redirect them to why I was here.
“You can’t risk arrest, and this is well understood. Still, there is a role for you. Should you want to join us. This is a critical moment for Le Moulin, and for the small farmers who need our help. Your help.”
They stared at each other for a beat beyond my own comfort.
“The woman from Brittany warned us,” Denis said, “about all this. About you and the Moulinards.”
He meant Nadia, I assumed.
“But she is a bit touched in the head I think,” Françoise said to Denis.
Denis shrugged. “Perhaps. That doesn’t mean she’s wrong. She said the action will be a trap and that a lot of people will be arrested.”
“I think Pascal might intend that,” I said. “But others of us, Aurélie, Burdmoore, René, Sophie, Paul, Felix, Florence, certain others that I cannot name, we have a different plan. Which is that no one will be arrested. Even if there’s a police kettle.”
I said we had divided in order to conquer. And my job was to clear a road. I described the fishermen’s route, from the meadow on the far side of the lake, currently impassible. I said we would have vehicles there, shuttling people to safety, and how comical and great it would be, when we all escaped the police kettle. But to achieve this, the road needed clearance.
“Can you two help me do this work?”
I said we had taken up a collection, and that myself and Aurélie—it was my instinct that they liked hearing her name, the invocation of someone who looked so legitimate and capable, with her long hair and her overalls, the way she commanded the farm truck—that we wanted them to be able to pick back up and move on, to find their way to Grenoble. I said I had relayed their situation, and that everyone was sympathetic. People felt it was critical to acknowledge elders and their achievements in opposing state violence. Who are we, I said, if we treat our elders as disposable? This had been yet one more example of Pascal’s failure of vision, I told them, his inability to lead and to uphold the ethics of the group. I unzipped a fanny pack at my waist and took out an envelope that contained one thousand euros.
“But that’s a lot!” Françoise said.
“Some of them are from rich families,” I said. “Take it.”
Françoise pocketed the envelope.
We walked to my Škoda, whose hatchback contained axes, shovels, a chain saw, two wheelbarrows, and ropes for pulling logs.
Denis and Françoise were both rugged and impressively hardy despite their age. They did not tire. Françoise barely even sweated. Denis was an expert with the chain saw. The two of them had a way of communicating that was purely physical, an understanding of who would pick up the heavier end of a log. Who would swing and who would step back. Neither complained.
I enjoyed those long hours of brute physical labor the three of us did together to clear that road, a day spent working like dogs. Its rewards were not unlike lying in the sun, emptying the mind, except that the more one puts in, the more one reaps, and this form of mind emptying left me wrung out in a way that was blissful.
Back at the house, thirsty and tired, I drank a forty, a formidable as the French call that large size of beer bottle, made myself a salami sandwich, and went upstairs to lie down in my room, the baby chamber.
Lucien had texted while I was working with the two Maos.
Robert the Comatose had died.
I replied that I was sorry to hear it.
—You have a big heart, Sadie.
Even simulating the role of his girlfriend, I didn’t convey bigheartedness. Was Lucien onto me?
—Can’t wait to see you. We wrap shooting early. As soon as a week from now.
