The 42nd Parallel

The Camera Eye (12)

when everybody went away for a trip Jeanne took us out to play every day in Farragut Square and told you about how in the Jura in winter the wolves come down and howl through the streets of the villages

and sometimes we’d see President Roosevelt ride by all alone on a bay horse and once we were very proud because when we took off our hats we were very proud because he smiled and showed his teeth like in the newspaper and touched his hat and we were very proud and he had an aide de camp

but we had a cloth duck that we used to play with on the steps until it began to get dark and the wolves howled ran with little children’s blood dripping from their snout through the streets of the villages only it was summer and between dog and wolf we’d be put to bed and Jeanne was a young French girl from the Jura where the wolves howled ran through the streets and when everybody had gone to bed she would take you into her bed

and it was a very long scary story and the worst of the wolves howled through the streets gloaming to freeze little children’s blood was the Loup Garou howling in the Jura and we were scared and she had breasts under her nightgown and the Loup Garou was terrible scary and black hair and rub against her and outside the wolves howled in the streets and it was wet there and she said it was nothing she had just washed herself

but the Loup Garou was really a man hold me close cheri a man howled through streets with a bloody snout that tore up the bellies of girls and little children Loup Garou

and afterwards you knew what girls were made like and she was very silly and made you promise not to tell but you wouldn’t have anyway