The Nature of the Beast

“Your children must’ve made things up,” said Myrna.

“Well, yes, but not anything so dramatic—”

“And so vivid,” said Antoinette. “He really sells it.”

“He probably just wants attention,” said Myrna.

“Oh God, don’t you hate people like that,” said Gabri.

He put a carrot on his nose and tried to balance it there.

“There’s a seal just asking to be clubbed,” said Myrna.

Ruth guffawed then looked at her. “Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen?”

“Shouldn’t you be cutting the eyes out of a sheet?” asked Myrna.

“Look, I like the kid,” said Ruth, “but let’s face it. He was doomed from the moment of conception.”

“What do you mean?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Well, look at his parents.”

“Al and Evelyn?” asked Armand. “I like them. That reminds me.” He walked to the door and picked up a canvas tote bag. “Al gave me this.”

“Oh, God,” said Antoinette. “Don’t tell me it’s—”

“Apples.” Armand held up the bag.

Gamache smiled. When he’d dropped off Laurent, his father Al had been on the porch, sorting beets for their organic produce baskets.

There was no mistaking Al Lepage. If a mountain came alive, it would look like Laurent’s father. Solid, craggy. He wore his long gray hair in a ponytail that might not have been undone since the seventies.

His beard was also gray and bushy and covered most of his chest, so that the plaid flannel shirt underneath was barely visible. Sometimes the beard was loose, sometimes it was braided and sometimes, like that afternoon, it was in its own ponytail so that Al’s head looked like something about to be tie-dyed.

Or, as Ruth once described him, a horse with two asses.

“Hi, cop,” Al had said when Armand parked and Laurent had jumped out of the car.

“Hello, hippie,” said Armand, going around to the back of the car.

“What’s he done now, Armand?” Al asked as they yanked the bike out of the station wagon.

“Nothing. He was just slightly disruptive in the bistro.”

“Zombies? Vampires? Monsters?” suggested Laurent’s father.

“Monster,” said Armand, closing the hatchback. “Only one.”

“You’re slipping,” Al said to his son.

“It was on a huge gun, Dad. Bigger than the house.”

“You need to clean up for dinner, you’re a mess. Quick now before your mother sees you.”

“Too late,” said a woman’s voice from the house.

Armand looked over and saw Evelyn standing on the porch, hands on her wide hips, shaking her head. She was much younger than Al. At least twenty years, which put her in her mid-forties. She too wore a plaid flannel shirt, and a full skirt that fell to her ankles. Her hair was also pulled back, though some wisps had broken free and were falling across her scrubbed face.

“What was it this time?” she asked Laurent with a mixture of amusement and weary tolerance.

“I found a gun in the woods.”

“You did?”

Evelyn looked alarmed and Gamache was once again amazed that this woman still believed her son. Was that love, he wondered, or the same form of delusion Laurent suffered from? A potent combination of wishful thinking and madness.

“It was just the other side of the bridge. In the woods.” Laurent pointed with his stick and almost hit Gamache in the face.

“Where is it now?” she asked. “Al, should we go and see?”

“Wait for it, Evie,” her husband said in his deep, patient voice.

“It’s huge, Mom. Bigger than the house. And there’s a monster on it. With wings.”

“Ahhh,” said Evelyn. “Thanks for bringing him back, Armand. Are you sure you don’t want to keep him for a while?”

“Mom.”

“Go inside and wash up. We’re having squirrel for dinner.”

“Again?”

Gamache smiled. He was never sure if what they claimed to eat was the truth. He actually thought they were vegetarians. He did know they were as self-sufficient as possible, selling their organic produce in panniers to subscribers. He and Reine-Marie among them.

In the winter they made ends meet by teaching courses on how to live a sustainable lifestyle. It was one of the great miracles that these two should find each other. Like Henri and Rosa. And then that Al and Evie should, later in life, have a child. One miracle begetting another. A wild child.