Dangerous People

6 the minnesota review Diana G. Collier Dangerous People High on the mountain ridge, chalet lights twinkled through the spruce. The sound of distance swept up from the valley below. "What's he doing now?" Rejean Therien lowered his paper. "The black dude with the earring? He's the strong arm for a loan shark and he's breaking the guy's fingers, j's'pose." Though the question had been in French, the answer came in English. His sister-in-law was watching American tv, cigarettes piling up in the ashtray beside her. After twenty years as a teller in a small town bank, Marie Tremblay had suddenly in her 45th year taken to talking tough like they did on tv. "Not you. Ginette." His wife's weary glance reached him as she let the window curtain drop. "Nothing. He's just standing out there." This in French, ignoring the English that her sister constantly addressed to her husband over her head. She sighed again and her husband poured her another rum to help shake off the week. For several moments the small chalet was quiet but for the clinking of ice, the fissure-like whoosh of silencer bullets. On tv, a black body exploded atop a car hood in a subterranean auto park. A white excop cleaning up the city any which way he could watched the body as it slid to the cement. "Couldn't we get something quieter?" Ginette said irritably. "Your wife wants it like a romance," Marie Tremblay said in English. "She don't want the real world." Rejean Therien changed the channel. If Ginette couldn't work, leaving them only his army pension, half his son's welfare and the rent from the cabin next door, it would finish the country weekends, here in their own chalet. He thought again how a man like himself—an athlete, a soldier—wasn't meant to grow old. "He's looking over here." Ginette drew back from the window with a start, glancing at him worriedly. "It doesn't seem right to me, him hanging around outside in the cold." "Maybe his wife figured, 'Enough of this running after Québécois women,' and locked him out." Rejean Therien was tickled at the thought, though the one time his wife had dared to bar the door on him, he nearly broke it down. "They can't wait to get their hands on us," Marie Tremblay said in English. "They got nothing like that at home." "If they're going to start fighting—if there's going to be noise—" Ginette sighed, then swallowed her drink and held it out to be filled again. "She don't look like the type to give trouble," Marie Tremblay said. Collier 7 "They don't like them with an independent spirit, I hear." Lighting another cigarette, she stared vehemently at the door. Their attention returned to tv, an American program dubbed over in French. "What now?" "Oh, the black guy, the pimp, he deals, I don't know, cocaine, heroin, quaaludes on the side. She got to go with him cause she needs a hit—" The married couple gazed at Marie Tremblay, bemused. "What kind of world," Ginette glanced at the window again. Therien put on his coat. "Going to get more wood for the fire," he said to satisfy her and shut her up. The shriek of a prostitute followed him out the door. Muffled by the tv, two soft metallic thuds—his wife bolting the door behind him. Embarrassed, he shook his head, hoped the sound hadn't carried. Outside, glancing at the sky, he was startled by a multitude of stars. It made him think of his war years—World War II with the Canadians, then like an addiction, Cochin-China and Algiers with the French—the years of his vigor united in memory with a stellar blaze. "Pleasant night," he called over. The other was already opening his cabin door. Without a word, he disappeared inside. "Huh," Rejean Therien grunted, put out. It was the second time that he had spoken to him, and the African had walked right on by. Hesitating on the porch, torn...