The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux

Author:Catherine Leroux
Language: ara, eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2016-05-18T18:35:59+00:00

A PENNY

(MONETTE AND ANGIE)

The grass is so high that it stands a good head taller than Monette. This doesn’t bother her, and using a branch she found where the trail begins, she knocks away the stalks that bar the path. She insisted on taking the lead; Angie is close at her heels, brushing the burrs off the little girl’s pink T-shirt and scanning the bushes for snakes and venomous spiders. The cicada’s song covers everything: the crunch of their steps, their thick breathing in the vegetable humidity, and the rustling of potential enemies on either side.

With her free hand, Monette still keeps a firm grasp on the molasses cookie, which she nibbles at parsimoniously. As far as Angie can see, a significant portion of the treat is crumbling its way out of the wrapper, but her sister is too absorbed by the walk to pay attention. Angie recalls the story of Hansel and Gretel and the bits of bread they strewed to be able to find their way again. She turns around several times to see if the birds are snapping up the cookie crumbs.

From time to time the girls must stride over a tiny watercourse gushing across the path toward the river. Monette invariably bends down to try to see some fish and asks:

“Brook or river?”

“Runoff from the rain,” Angie explains.

As it hasn’t rained for weeks, this answer does not sound entirely satisfactory, but Angie makes no attempt to elaborate. Such rivulets and the silty furrows they create are part of the terrain. Water is so abundant in these parts.

The vegetation grows thicker and with it the insects’ song, the cries of the blue jays.

“Are we still in Georgia?” Monette inquires.

“Uh-huh,” Angie softly answers.

The little girl gives her big sister a doubtful look. She asks this same question whenever she finds herself in a place without houses or pavement, as if the state were defined solely according to its degree of civilization, its signs of human engineering. As if such an untamed environment could have neither name, nor border, nor government.

A mockingbird passes overhead and draws Monette out of her questions. The smell of oil and tar filters in through the grass, and Angie guesses they are not very far. After about forty paces they reach a clearing streaked with train tracks, which lie behind a fence too rusted and broken to warrant that name. Pulling back a section of the chain-link mesh, Angie lets Monette through first and, once she herself has crossed, puts her hand on the diminutive crumb-littered chest to keep Monette still. There is a rumbling noise to the north.

“Don’t move. The train’s coming.”

She can almost feel Monette’s heart leap as she hops up and down. The spectacle of the train is an endless source of excitement for her.

“Let’s put down a penny! Let’s put down a penny!” she shouts.

Angie searches in her pocket for a one cent piece and nimbly rushes to the tracks to lay it down. When she comes back and takes

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