Bellefleur Read Online Free PDF Page B

and cattle and sheep watered; though narrower, and steeper, on higher ground, it sprawled in the meadows, turning back lazily on itself in a sequence of S ’s. It was fairly shallow in parts, and as deep as twelve or fifteen feet in others. Cattail and sedge and alder and willow bushes grew thick and disorderly on its banks. Great bleached-white boulders lay strewn everywhere, tossed down, the children were told, by a giant with a bad temper who lived atop Mount Blanc. But when did that happen, they asked. Oh, a hundred years ago, they were told. But did it really happen, they asked. Really? —what do you mean, really? You see the boulders there, don’t you? Go out and judge for yourselves!
    Alone Raphael tramped upstream one morning, thinking he would discover the creek’s source. His uncle Emmanuel was famous in the Valley (though people laughed at him too: certainly Ewan and Gideon laughed at him) for the fine, fastidiously detailed maps he had made of the mountains, which showed every river, creek, brook, run, pond, and lake; Emmanuel disappeared for long stretches of time, for as many as eight or nine months, and all of the children, or at least all the boys, admired him. It crossed Raphael’s mind that he might run away from home, and go to live with his uncle, somewhere up in the mountains . . . . But after less than three miles he gave up, exhausted. The creek bed and much of the bank were a jumble of rock, dislodged shale, fallen trees, rotting logs, and queer writhing pockets and eddies of froth; some of the waterfalls were as high as ten feet, and their spray was chill and blinding. Raphael estimated that he had climbed only a few hundred feet up the mountain but he was badly winded. His face stung where willow branches had slapped it, his ears roared from the falls, wasps buzzed angrily about his head, he had frightened—and been frightened by—a ring-necked snake sunning itself on a log (his brother Garth had once brought home in triumph a twelve-footer, slung about his neck like a muffler), and when he drew off his boots to rub his aching feet he discovered a half-dozen leeches between his toes, fastened to his white skin. Nasty ugly horrible things, sucking his blood. . . . Fixed so tightly to his flesh. . . . He nearly panicked at the sight of them, and whimpered aloud like a small child. By the time he returned home his head pounded from the sun and every nerve in his frail body was twitching.
    Why did God make bloodsuckers, Raphael asked his older sister Yolande, didn’t He know what He was doing?
    Yolande, pretty Yolande, delicately scented with a cologne-touched lace handkerchief tucked into her belt, did not even glance at him. She watched her mirrored reflection and continued brushing her long hair, which was brown and blond and auburn, all at once, but which had, to her exasperation, a tendency to separate into ringlets on her shoulders. Don’t be a baby, Raphael, she said, absently, you know there’s no more a God up in the sky than there’s a Devil sitting on a throne in Hell.
    At lessons the next morning Raphael asked Demuth Hodge the same question. Mr. Hodge, soon to be dismissed from Bellefleur Manor (and without ever knowing precisely why: he had believed he was teaching Latin, Greek, English, mathematics, history, literature, composition, geography, and “basic science,” with great success, considering the Bellefleur children’s wildly varying skills and interest and patience), mumbled something about not being allowed, in his capacity as tutor, to speak to the children of religious matters. “You must know that your family is divided on the subject—there are those who believe, and those who do not—and neither side will tolerate the other’s position. So I am afraid I dare not respond to your question other than to suggest that it is a profound, noble question, which you might spend the rest of your life answering. . . .”
    Last of all he went to cousin Vernon, who