How Huge the Night Read Online Free Page A

his chair facing half away from the table.
    “We are starting a new book of the Bible today,” said Papa. “Genesis.”
    Benjamin did not move.
    Papa outdid himself. He had Julien flip the lights off as he talked about the darkness before the dawn of creation. He talked about the word, and the act, and how the authors of the Bible knew that descriptions of God were nothing compared to showing what he did. In the dark, Julien heard the scrape of a chair on the floor. God’s first act, said Papa—the giving of light. And he switched the light back on, and Julien blinked in the sudden blaze. Benjamin was back at the table, looking at Papa with his wide brown eyes.
     
     
    Monday was Julien’s last day on the farm. School started tomorrow. Tomorrow he would try his chances with Benjamin and those guys who’d stared at them in the street. He’d find out where there was some soccer going on. Then they’d see what Julien Losier was made of.
    He and Grandpa were digging the last fall potatoes, Grandpa putting a digging fork in the ground and turning up a handful of them all golden for Julien to gather. He’d thought this was a weed patch till Grandpa had showed him the thin, withered stalks in a neat line where the potatoes hid. They worked in silence together, keeping up the rhythm, the only sound the small nourishing thunk of potato on potato in the basket.
    When the silence had deepened and lengthened between them, Grandpa opened his mouth.
    “How’s life with Benjamin?”
    “Oh,” Julien said, and exhaled slowly, his fingers digging into the dirt. His mind was suddenly blank. “It’s … it’s not …”
    Grandpa turned up another clutch of potatoes, and Julien gathered them with quick fingers. Grandpa planted his fork, put his foot on it, and paused.
    “Not so good,” said Julien finally.
    Grandpa nodded without surprise, and Julien felt the ache in his chest give way a little.
    “I don’t know, Grandpa, it’s just …” Horrible. He makes everything weird, and wrong, and he’s German, and I think he hates me. “I wish …”
    “What do you wish, Julien?”
    “I wish one single thing was the way it used to be.”
    Grandpa nodded. “You’ve lost a lot this summer,” he said.
    A rush of tears filled Julien’s eyes, and he blinked fast. He bent down to gather a stray potato.
    Grandpa was quiet for a moment, leaning on his fork. Julien looked up and followed his gaze past Tanieux’s hill and the farther wooded ridge, on toward low green mountains in the west, with the sun above them.
    “The two-headed mountain. See it?” Grandpa pointed with his chin. One of the green peaks was split in two, one part taller than the other. “Her name’s Lizieux.”
    Julien nodded.
    “I like to think she’s the first thing our ancestors saw of this place on their journey north.” He looked at Julien. “Never let them tell you you’re not from Tanieux, Julien. You’re part of the story Tanieux is most proud of.”
    “What?”
    “You weren’t listening when your father and the pastor were talking to the Kellers. You were thinking, ‘That’s just history.’ Julien, history is where we come from.” His grandfather’s warm eyes were webbed with a thousand smile wrinkles. “Listen now. Our people came up from the south. They came in fear. Because they were Huguenots, and religious freedom had been revoked in France, and the king’s soldiers were arresting and torturing any Protestant they could find. They came looking for shelter. Refuge.” He looked at the far green mountains. “They came up the Régordane road, the old road beyond those mountains, and I like to think they looked east one morning and saw Lizieux holding up her wounded head and thought, ‘Maybe there. Maybe there is a place for us.’”
    Grandpa turned to Julien. “They came here. And they were taken in.”
    Julien looked at the mountains from where he knelt, his hands in the dirt. “I see,” he said.
    “Oh, Julien, I want to tell