“Yeah, under the circumstances, I’d like a second opinion.”
“Then get one. You’ve got a better source than me here. Someone who can assess both Nicole’s physical and mental health. You just need to kick his ass hard enough.”
“I wish I could,” Dalton grumbles. “If I threaten to put him on shoveling duty for a week, he’ll just take off his damn butcher’s apron, pull on his parka, and ask me to point him in the right direction. Only person who can get him to do it?” He looks at me.
I sigh. “I’ll go talk to Mathias.”
FIFTEEN
I push open the door to the butcher’s shop. From the back room comes the ominous sound of a saw skritch-scraping through bone. The smell of blood hangs so heavy I can taste it.
Most residents will stop right here and call a tentative “hello?” If they don’t get an answer, they’ll leave.
I walk around the counter and poke my head into the back room. “Mathias? Avez-vous une minute?”
The saw stops, and his voice drifts out, “Pour vous, oui.”
Most Canadians my age have taken French. Years of it, the end result of which is that we can travel to Paris and ask for directions en fran?ais and even understand the response if it isn’t too long. Asking for those directions in Montreal is trickier, because what we’ve learned isn’t Quebecois.
I spent a few years working in Ottawa, which vastly improved both my French and my dialect, and I shamelessly “practice” it on Mathias, knowing that while his English is perfect, he enjoys the chance to communicate in his native language. We do have two other Francophones in Rockton, but Mathias doesn’t like them. And if Mathias doesn’t like you? Don’t talk to him. Just don’t.
He comes out of the back room, wiping his bloodied hands on his even bloodier apron. At fifty-three, he’s one of the oldest residents in Rockton. If there’s a stereotype of a butcher, he doesn’t fit it. He looks like a young Ian McKellen, a little less dapper and a little more … I won’t say dangerous, but there’s a glint in his eyes like he’s sizing up everyone around him and finding them terribly amusing.
He scrubs up at the sink and takes off his apron. I think the only people he bothers removing it for are me, Dalton, and Isabel, and it’s not so much respect as the realization his bloody-butcher routine isn’t nearly as much fun with people who aren’t fazed by it.
When his hands are dry, he disappears into the back and returns with a plate. On it are three slices of sausage. Without a word, he lays it in front of me. I try each slice, then point at the first piece and ask, in French, “What wood did you use to smoke that one?”
“Birch.”
“It’s better than the aspen.” I point to the second piece. “I like the heat in that one, though. Did I taste anise?”
“Correct. Eric brought me new spices.”
“Nice. My favorite, though, is…” I pick up the rest of the third and eat it. “You had me at cardamom.” I say the spice name in English, which makes him chuckle and say, “Cardamome.”
“Close enough.”
I get a waggled finger for that, and he disappears, and returns with a package of the cardamom sausage for me.
“You recognize the spice,” he says. “But the meat?”
I chew slower. “Is that … pork? Wait, is this…”
“Your wild boar.”
There aren’t actually wild boar in the Yukon. Many years ago, though, the town experimented with pigs, importing a Hungarian breed that crossed European boar with domestic pigs and created a winter-hardy pig with a wool-like coat. Great idea. Until they escaped. They’ve been living and breeding in this part of the woods for generations. A deep-woods hiker once got a picture of one. It was dismissed as a Photoshopped fake. Clearly there are no wooly-coated wild pigs in the Yukon. For imaginary beasts, though, they’re delicious.
“So Rockton gets bacon for breakfast this week?” I ask as I eat more sausage.
“You get bacon. And cardamom sausage. Eric, too, if he asks nicely. You must make him ask nicely. Which means you will probably get all the bacon.”
“Oh, I can get him to ask nicely.”
Mathias laughs. “I am sure you can. People keep waiting for Eric to be more pleasant, now that he has a girl. The only difference? He scowls a little less when he throws people in his cell.”
I shake my head and push the empty plate aside. “While I appreciate the gesture, I can’t take all the bacon. That’s not fair.”
“Fair is for fools. It is your first pig. It is yours. No argument.” He takes the plate. “And it is a bribe, as well. Take the sausage and the bacon, and do not ask me what you came here to ask me.”
“Then you need to keep the meat, Mathias. I have to ask.”
“No, you do not. I know the question, and I will answer it with a resounding no. Good enough?”
I sigh and lean on the counter. I say nothing. I just wait.
“You are going to tell me that you need me,” he says. “You are going to tell me the sad story of this girl I cannot remember.”