CREPY-EN-VALOIS, France -- The work-worn fingers of weeping Mrs. Rene Syx slowly moved over the list of 44 names posted in front of the town hall listing the children who died in a flaming bus crash.
The fingers trembled as she caressed the names of four of her six children killed in one terrible moment on 'Black Saturday,' the start of the nation's biggest vacation weekend.
Christian Syx, Nathalie Syx, Patrice Syx, Valerie Syx.
Her long hair tied with a ribbon, Mrs. Syx wore black for mourning. Her fifth child stood behind her, not really understanding.
Finally, her fingers reached the list of those children from Crepy and nearby villages who escaped death in the accident.
'Oh, there is the sixth,' Mrs. Syx sobbed in relief.
Erik Syx, 12, indeed was on the list of those survivors who continued to the camp at Aussois.
'I want to go there to bring him home today,' Mrs. Syx said.
'I had six children; four are dead,' she told a reporter. 'We were visiting friends in another town when somebody heard on the radio there was an accident. We could not believe it.'
As she walked away she cried, 'The superhighway was too crowded. Bus drivers who drink are assassins.'
Other Crepy residents have their own versions of the fiery accident, none supported yet by fact. 'Driving at 81 mph in the rain...' muttered one man over his glass of morning red wine in the Bar du Centre.
A total of 107 youngsters boarded the two buses late Friday. They were from low-income families given free camp vacations by the city government.
In their neighborhood near the half dozen small factories of this quiet town of 15,000, the bereaved families stared out the windows of their small stone houses or clustered in front of state-run apartment houses.
At the town sports center, 44 coffins stood in three rows on the silent basketball court after arriving by military plane from the Burgundy town of Beaune near the scene of Saturday's crash, the worst in French history.
On two of the smallest coffins a mourning family had placed large color photographs of two laughing boys, aged about 5 and 8.
A total of 53 travelers died in the fiery collision of three buses and seven cars.
Parents emerging from the gymnasium wept. Some who were flown to Beaune by military plane to bring back the coffins had to be given sedatives on the plane, police said.
Sunday shoppers with long loaves of bread in their market baskets for Sunday dinner walked silently down the main street or paused to talk in low voices about the disaster.
The baker said, 'Crepy is sad today. Nobody talks of anything else.'
But outside the Bar du Centre a green car was parked, festooned with white ribbons from a Sunday morning wedding.
Life went on in Crepy.
