“There was a boy in my village.” She looked out across the lake, and no longer seemed to be speaking to me. “His parents had died in the big influenza. It cut through Locronan like a knife through butter. We all gave him what we could. But we did not have very much ourselves. He slept in our barn, with the donkey and the sheep. I don’t recall his name. In the village they called him Pemoc’h, because he slept where the pig would sleep. Each morning Pemoc’h came to our kitchen door. I would give him a glass of milk, and half a loaf of bread. Sometimes I gave him dripping from the Sunday beef. Each evening he came again. I gave him scraps from the table. Turnip tops, cracked eggs. He always thanked me three times. Trugarez, trugarez, trugarez. I can never forget that. Sometimes he was so hungry that when he took the food his hands shook. For that poor food he worked all day for my father in the field. For years, he did this, and his thanks were never less than heartfelt. He was a grateful little boy. He knew how lucky he was.” She got up. “I’m going to do my thirty minutes,” she said. Daddy nodded. She walked away, her dress blue against the blue sky. Mommy never felt too hot.

Despite the coffee Daddy fell into a deep sleep with his hat over his face. He slept a great deal, now. It seemed like every waking moment was exhausting to him. The red woman stared at us. She had noticed the three of us eating baby food for lunch. I tried to imagine that she was red because she had been fatally scalded and would die soon. I wished for her death with all my might, but the afternoon just went on. Small teal ducks played at the far edge of the lake, where the treeline marched right down to the water’s edge. Daddy snored. He wasn’t supposed to sleep while watching me.

Not long before, by this lake, a young boy had disappeared. They brought the kids from the group home there on weekends sometimes. Maybe they still do. This boy didn’t get back on the bus at the end of the day. Sometimes I gave myself pleasant chills, imagining what happened to him. Maybe he chased a pretty red bird, or a deer, until he was out of sight of the crowds, by the deeper reaches of the lake. When he stumbled and fell into the cold there was no one to hear his cries. Or he wandered under the vast green canopy of the forest, until all his mind became green and he faded into the dappled light and became something else, something other than a boy. But he probably just hitched a ride back into the city. He was trouble, everyone said so.