For Sure (54 page)

“Alright den, but just a wee one, on account of 'tis late an' we's all worn out.”

Étienne sniffled without protest.

“Der's a little bird, a wee little ting like any bird you might be spottin' 'round 'ere any day o' de week.”

“De brown ones or de black?”

“More like de brown, I'd say.”

. . .

“Only dis wee bird's special on account of ee's got a yellow ring on top o' 'is 'ead, see, yellow wid a bit o' orange in de middle, an' some black an' white all around. When folks seen dat decoration, dey tawt it looked sometin' like a crown, so dey took to callin' dat bird a kinglet, wot means a wee king.”

Terry had no idea where he was going with this story.

“Only dis 'ere wee bird's not only special on account of 'is crown.”

. . .

“Ee's special as well on account of der was a little boy who'd 'eard talk of de kinglet, only ee'd never seen one. An', ee couldn't say why, ee didn't know, but ee 'ad dis terrible need to see dat bird.”

“Like Saint-Thomas?”

The question made Terry laugh.

“Good point! Only not exactly like Saint-Thomas. It was on account of ee'd read a story 'bout dat kinglet in 'is school-book an', fer some reason, the kinglet like stayed in 'is 'ead. So, stands to reason, ee'd like to be seein' one. Specially on account of de yellow'n orange crown.”

“Wid de black an' white.”

“Dat's right.”

. . .

. . .

“An' den wot?”

Terry had been groping, but the boy's question gave him an idea for an ending.

“Den nuttin'. 'Cept dat little boy? Well, dat was meself.”

Étienne opened his eyes wide, looked up at his dad as though he'd just learned something fundamentally important about him. But Terry did not give him time to speak.

“An' just today, I seen my wee kinglet.”

“Where?”

“Awh, ee was just der, sittin on de floor in one of de small rooms in de hospital. An' I seen 'is crown real clear an' everytin'. . . “

Étienne smiled. Then he closed his eyes and let his head sink into the pillow, ready for sleep. Terry planted a kiss on his forehead, stood and, on his way out, turned off Babar on the dresser.

“Dad?”

“Yes. . . “

“Dat was a terrible lovely story.

“Tanks, me boy.”

“Yer welcome, Dad.”

“G'night.”

“G'night, Dad.”

Concerning Yellow
. To run straight into the lion's den, and pick a title in spite of its tenuous link to the book. Hope that the link will emerge somehow, and that it will be luminous.

“Fer sure, language is an obsession 'round dese parts!”

“Can you explain?”

“Well, on account o' de way yer supposed to be talkin'!”

“You knows yerself! De whole ting's a right cramped mess.”

. . .

. . .

“Ask me, I'd say 'tis more like a fear.”

“Can you explain?”

“Naw, not really.”

(
A spattering of stifled laughter)

“All de same, 'tis an obsession.”

“Would you say it's a collective obsession? A collective fear?”

“Sort of, sure. Aldoh, der's lots of folks doesn't care a rat's arse about it.”

. . .

“I'd say 'tis a religion.”

“A religion? Can you explain?”

A mistake? And on the title page to boot? Is it possible? M. Michelet? Shouldn't that be Jules Michelet, the French historian recommended no less than five times in
La Bibliothèque idéale
? Unless the “M.” simply means
monsieur
?
Is that possible?

One of the first activities Zed and Chico shared as father and son was a bicycle ride along the Petitcodiac. The water level was at its lowest.

“Did you ever see de
mascaret
? De tidal bore?”

Chico shook his head no.

“She ought to be comin' in any time now. Do ya want to wait?”

Chico only nodded. But Zed was not discouraged; he understood that a father-son relationship was not something that blossomed overnight.

“De wave used to be a lot bigger. Taller'n me even. Nowadays we hardly sees 'er. 'Tisn't much more dan a bit o' lace dat rolls along de edge o' de shore. Not too encouragin' fer de tourists.”

The image did peak Chico's curiosity slightly, but he could see that that would not be enough to satisfy the tourists.

“Wot dey doesn't see is 'ow de water in de river comes right up after. You'd tink de eart' was tiltin' over dis way an' de water was runnin' downhill.”

. . .

“Luh, 'ere she comes!”

Zed was pointing to the bend or elbow in the river, but Chico saw nothing.

“De ripple's gonna get bigger bit by bit . . .”

Chico waited. Although he was hardly impressed, he tried not to show it so as not to disappoint Zed. And when the river began to swell somewhat, Zed himself admitted:

“Alright, 'twasn't de big event of de century . . . we'll do better next time.”

Which made the boy smile.

Names of (some) living languages of the world: Akan, Aleut, Algonquin, Alsatian, Amharic, Angevin, English, Anglo-Norman, Arabic, Aragonese, Aramean, Aretino this is not a language but a person, Italian who invented modern literate pornography, Assamese, Asturian, Avestic, Aymara, Azeri, Bambara, Baoulé, Basque, Béarnese, Bengali, Berrichon, Belarusian, Bizkaian, Bourbonnais, Bourguignon, Brabantian, Brazilian, Breton, Bulgarian, Calabrian, Cantonese, Carcinol, Caribbean, Castilian, Catalan, Cham, Champenois, Chinese (Mandarin), Corsican, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dinka, Dutch, Egyptian, Estonian, Ewe, Faroese, Finnish, Flemish, Florentine, French, Franc-Comtois, Frisian, Futunan, Galician, Gallo, Gaelic, Gascon, Gavot, Genoese, German, Greek, Greenlandic (or Kalaallisut), Gronings, Gipuzkoan, Hawai'ian, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Hottentot (or Khoekhoe), Inuktitut, Irish, Iroquoian, Icelandic, Italian, Javanese, Karelian, Kayla, Kazakh, Khmer, le Kyrgyz, Korean, Lapurdian, Lahnda, Languedocien (or Occitan), Laotian, Latvian, Leonese, Ligurian, Lillois, Limburgish, Lithuanian, Lombard, Lorrain, Luxembourgish, Macedonian, Mainiot, Malay, Malagasy, Maninka, Manchu (endangered), Man, Mande, Mansi, Manx, Maori, Marathi, Marseillais, Mongol (or Khalkha), Mozarabic, Nahuatl, Neapolitan, Nenets, Nepalese, Niçard, Nootka, Norman, Norwegian, Ostyak, Pulaar, Punjabi, Picard, Piedmontese, Pisan, Poitevin, Polish, Portuguese, Provençal, Prussian, Quechua, Rhodanien, Rouchi, Rouergat, Romani, Romanian, Russian, San, Saintongeais, Sami, Sanskrit, Selkup, Scots, Serbian, Sicilian, Sinhala, Sienna, Slovak, Slovene, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tamazight, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Tibetan, Thai, Tuscan, Tuareg, Tourangeau, Trégorrois, Tupi, Tupi-Guarani, Turkish, Turkmen, Twents, Uyghur, Urdu, Ukranian, Uzbek, Vannetais, Venetian, Vietnamese, Wallisian, Walloon, Welsh, Wolof, Yoruba, Yupik, Zhuang and Zuberoan.

Note that the above list includes numerous French dialects, sub-dialects, and regional accents. Not included are many indigenous languages (struggling for survival), for example those spoken in Canada: Abenaki, Babine-Witsuwit'en, Beothuk, Blackfoot, Broken Slavey, Bungee, Carrier, Cayuga, Chilcotin, Chinook Jargon, Coast Tsimshian, Comox, Cree, Dene Suline, Dogrib, Gwich'in, Haida, Haisla, Halkomelem, Hän, Heiltsuk-Oowekyala, Innu-aimun, Inuinnaqtun, Inupiaq, Inuvialuktun, Kaska, Kutenai, Kwak'wala, Labrador Inuit Pidgin French, Malecite-Passamaquoddy, Michif, Mi'kmaq, Mohawk, Munsee, Naskapi, Nicola, Nitinaht, Nlaka'pamuctsin, Nuu-chah-nulth, Nuxálk, Ojibwe, Okanagan, Oneida, Onondaga, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Saanich, Sekani, Seneca, Sháshíshálh, Shuswap, Slavey, Squamish, St'at'imcets, Tagish, Tahltan, Tlingit, Tsuut'ina, Tuscarora, Tutchone, Western Abnaki, Wyandot.

Finally, note that Chiac figures in Wikipedia's list of living languages.

“You can moan an' sigh all ya like, time won't go by any faster. You'd best find sometin' to do.”

Unforeseen circumstances had prevented Terry and Carmen from taking the children apple picking as they'd promised. Instead of leaving in the morning, they would have to wait until late afternoon.

“An' I doesn't want to take a nap after lunch neider.”

Terry had been counting on the children's nap to sneak one in himself.

“I tinks it'd do you a world o' good to have a little lie down.”

“I doesn't want to lie down.”

“An' why not? Dat way you won't be sittin' an' frettin' all de time.”

“I don't mind frettin'. It's de waitin' I don't like.”

According to Freud, even typos conceal real emotions.

“Come 'ere, boy! Yer de one dat broke des 'ere tulips. True or false?

The March of Language
. Or
of Lalanguage? The March of Lalanguage
. Sounds too much like military music.
Concerning Lalanguage. The Misunderstanding in the Quidproquo of Lalanguage
.
To what quid does Lalanguage pro quo?
Now it's all beginning to sound like a bit of a joke, to be honest.
Tales of Lalanguage
?

Terry and Élizabeth were beginning to clear the table when Zed suddenly announced:

“Alright den, Chico . . . time fer yer spankin'.”

None of the children had the slightest idea what he was talking about.

“Wot spankin' you say? Why his birt'day spankin'! Youse never 'eard of a birt'day spankin'?”

Zed gathered them all together on the big carpet in the middle of the room.

“When 'tis yer birtday, de udders spanks you on de bum. Yer seven years old? We gives you seven slaps, an one so youse'll grow. We always got our spankins, didn't we now, Terry?”

Chico, wondering if Zed was pulling his leg, glanced over at Étienne to see if he knew what was up.

“Not big whackin' slaps, mind you. 'Tisn't supposed to hurt much, really. OK, Chico, are ya ready, or does we have to catch you first?”

The other children thought this new idea sounded like fun; they couldn't wait for Chico to make up his mind, since they now realized that they were going to get the chance to smack him on the bum.

“Now, don't be fergettin', Zed said dey're not to be big hard whacks!”

“One . . . two . . .”

Those first up were too gentle.

“Well, lay it on a bit harder dan dat. We gotta hear a bit of a slap . . . tree . . . four . . . dat's de spirit . . . five . . . six . . . seven . . . an' . . . one more to make you grow!”

The children were all laughing. Chico got up laughing as well, relieved to have emerged unhurt.

“Alright den, now we's can eat de cake!”

“Wait! Ee's gotta blow out de candles first!”

“Fer sure, he'll be blowin' out de candles!”

The children scrambled to sit round the table. In the kitchen, Carmen and Élizabeth lit the candles on the cake covered in candy. Smarties, coconut, and bits of licorice.

In his preface, Michelet states that the work was first published in 1827. He also describes what he hoped to accomplish by writing a modern history of western and southern Europe destined to be memorized by students. The preface also includes the words “
colléges
” — the acute accent was changed to a grave accent with the reform of French spelling in 1878 — and “
présentassent,
” the third-person plural imperfect subjunctive of the verb “to present,” a form of conjugation abandoned in the twentieth century.

“Wot would be de difference den betwixt a fantasy an' an obsession?”

“Can someone answer this question?”

. . .

“No one?”

. . .

“Yes?”

“I don't really know 'ow to explain it, only a fantasy seems a whole lot more fun dan de obsession.”

“You said ‘
un obsession
' like it was masculine. Only should be ‘
une obsession
', on account of obsession is feminine!”

“Dat's de troot'!”

“Haha! Ha! Hahaha! . . .”

“Please! . . . Please! . . .”

In
1953: Chronicle of a Birth Foretold
, the Acadian novelist France Daigle mentions the collaboration between Firmin Didot and the editor of directories and almanacs Sébastien Bottin (1764–1853) in publishing the
Didot-Bottin Commercial Directory
of 1882.

“Me, 'tis when you find yerself shakin' hands wid some fellow owes you money.”

Still looking for a link with yellow.

Standing on the dune, Étienne, Chico, Zed, and Terry were looking at the beached whale below:

“How come she didn't stay in de water?”

“Most likely, she didn't know she was so close to shore. Sometimes dey suffers from disorientation. 'Specially when der's a stormy sea an' de terrible big waves an' dat.”

. . .

“Wot's dis orient?”

“Wot?”