The Nature of the Beast
“And I’ll protect you,” said the boy, swishing the stick so violently it struck Armand in the knee.
“I hope you have another husband waiting in the wings,” said Antoinette. “I’m not sure this one will survive the walk to the car.”
They watched Armand put the bicycle in the back of the Volvo, then he put the stick in the backseat, but the boy took it out and stood firm. He was going nowhere without it in his hands. It was, after all, a dangerous world.
Armand admitted defeat and relented, though they could see him giving the boy ground rules.
“I’d go on match.com right now, if I were you,” said Myrna to Reine-Marie.
* * *
After a few kilometers the boy turned to Gamache.
“What’re you humming?”
“Was I humming?” said Armand, surprised.
“Oui.” And the boy perfectly reproduced the tune.
“It’s called ‘By the Waters of Babylon,’” said Armand. “A hymn.”
John Fleming. John Fleming. He associated the hymn with him, though Gamache could never figure out why.
It couldn’t be the same man, he thought. It’s a common name. He was seeing ghosts where none existed.
“We don’t go to church,” said the boy.
“Neither do we,” said Armand. “Not often anyway. Though sometimes I sit in the little one in Three Pines, when no one else’s there.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s peaceful.”
The boy nodded. “Sometimes I sit in the woods because it’s peaceful. But then the aliens arrive.”
The boy began humming again, in a high, thin voice, a tune Gamache recognized from long, long ago.
“How do you know that song?” Gamache asked. “It’s way before your time.”
“My dad sings it to me every night at bedtime. It’s by Neil Young. Dad says he’s a genius.”
Gamache nodded. “I agree with your father.”
The boy clutched the stick.
“I hope the safety’s on,” said Gamache.
“It is.” He turned to Armand. “The gun’s real, patron.”
“Oui,” said Gamache.
But he wasn’t listening. He was watching the road, and thinking of the tune stuck in his head.
By the waters, the waters of Babylon,
We sat down and wept.
But the play wasn’t called that. It was called She Sat Down and Wept.
The play could not possibly be by that John Fleming. He didn’t write plays. And even if he did, no director in his right mind would produce it. It must be another man with the same name.
Beside him, the boy looked out the window at the early fall landscape and clutched the stick just below where his father had etched his name into the hilt.
Laurent. Laurent Lepage.
CHAPTER 3
Their dinner guests had already arrived and were sipping drinks and eating apple and avocado salsa with corn chips by the time Armand returned.
“Got Laurent home all right, I see,” said Reine-Marie, greeting him at the door. “No alien invasions?”
“We nipped it in the bud.”
“Not quite,” said Gabri, standing at the door to their study. “One got through Earth’s defenses.”
Armand and Reine-Marie looked into the small room off the living room where an elderly, angular woman with ladders up her stockings and patches on her sweater sat in an armchair reading.
“It’s the mother shit,” said Gabri.
A strong smell of gin met them. A duck sat on the old woman’s lap and Henri, the Gamaches’ German shepherd, was curled at her feet. Gazing up adoringly at the duck.
“Don’t worry about greeting me at the door,” Armand said to Henri. “It’s fine. Really.”
He looked at the dog and shook his head. Love took all forms. This was, though, a step up from Henri’s previous crush, which was the arm of the sofa.
“The first hint of infestation was the smell of gin,” said Gabri. “Her race seems to run on it.”
“What’s for dinner?” their neighbor Ruth Zardo demanded, struggling out of the armchair.
“How long have you been there?” Reine-Marie asked.
“What day is it?”
“I thought you were out clubbing baby seals,” said Gabri, taking Ruth’s arm.
“That’s next week. Don’t you read my Facebook updates?”
“Hag.”
“Fag.”
Ruth limped into the living room. Rosa the duck goose-stepped behind her, followed by Henri.