Page 59 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“He told me Alberte came down here because of work. That he worked for some doctor. Henri Voclain.”

The change is immediate. The man’s face closes off in recognition.

“You knew him too?”

He looks toward the front counter as if checking whether the clerk has returned. She hasn’t. He then gestures for me to move farther down the aisle.

“Doctor Voclain,” he says quietly. “Yes.”

“What was he like?”

The man’s eyes sharpen. “Why?”

“Because nobody will tell me anything about my own grandfather.” That comes out more frustrated than I intend it to.

He considers me, then says, “There were many rumors about the two of them. That they were…” The man’s gaze moves over my face. His voice lowers to a hush. “Something more than doctor and assistant.”

Is he saying…?

“Were they together?”

The old man looks uncomfortable. “I cannot be confident that it is true. But that is the rumor. That they were together… as men and women are together.”

“Oh.” Does the village hate them because they were gay? And they’re, what, alienating me because I’m the grandson of a queer man?

Before I can decide how I feel about that, the shopkeeper reappears from the back, carrying a plastic-wrapped packet. The old man straightens, shuffling a half-step away from me and toward the front counter, as if leaving behind the moment entirely. He fixes his gaze on the shelf of screws and pretends not to exist.

The shopkeeper calls out to me in French, waving the packet, and I follow her up to the register, glancing once over my shoulder. The old man is still there, but now he’s thumbing through something on the pegboard, entirely absorbed in the minute differences between two nearly identical lengths of twine.

The shopkeeper rings up my total, gives me my change, and as I’m collecting my things, the old man materializes by my side.

He waits until the shopkeeper is turned away, then says, very quietly, “You should ask your friend Moreau again. He knows more than he says.”

“Why?” I whisper back. “Why would he hide it?”

The man’s jaw tenses, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “That… I do not know.”

“Did you—” I start, then stop, unable to finish the question. Did you hate them for it, too?

He seems to hear what I don’t say, because his expression softens for a fraction of a second. “Alberte was a good man,” he says. “He did not deserve what happened.”

Something cold passes through me. “What… did happen?”

But the shopkeeper is back, eyeing us both with bland suspicion, and the old man gives a tiny, stiff bow of his head.

“I must go,” he says, already turning for the door, his cane thumping lightly ahead of his feet. The sunlight catches his hair as he goes, flashing white-gold before he passes out of sight.

I stand there, holding my bag of window latches, adrenaline making my fingers shake.

On the walk home, I try to reason it out. Maybe the old man meant Alberte was run out of town. People don’t get exiled for being gay in the twenty-first century, not in France, right? I mean, if the village is that homophobic, I feel like Camille should’ve warned me.

Just a quick “hey, they hate queers here” would’ve worked.

I realize I never got the old man’s name.

It’s possible I’m still a little concussed from last night.

The sun is high when I reach the cottage. The house seems to be holding its breath, all the curtains drawn, the garden flattened by heat.